commencement

Soil and Light

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Rich Frishman designed this faceplate for his son, Gabe Frishman

Every graduating senior contains a multitude of stories. Commencement celebrates them. And Commencement day adds more. Like this one from proud father Rich Frishman (a Seattle-area based photographer), who cultivated a special gift for his son Gabe Frishman (class of 2016) and Gabe’s friends and academic advisor. The photo is the face plate of a card designed by Rich, and the story behind it we share below in Rich’s own words.

“From our first visit, when Gabe was selecting which college would best challenge him, we have been struck by the beauty of K’s compact quad, rolling idyllically down from Stetson, and all the energy it contained. As the heart of the campus, it seems to symbolize the nurturing environment of Kalamazoo College. The towering white oaks and lush grass transform a simple rectangle bounded by concrete and brick into a welcoming meeting place full of life. The trees became symbols, living embodiments of this special place and process; of growth and strength and transformation.

Watching my son Gabe and his friends joyfully embracing each other on the quad, then hurling themselves with complete abandon into the pillow-like piles of gathered autumn leaves, inspired this botanical experiment. Gabe, my wife Brenda and I began collecting acorns on the lower end of the quad (between Hoben, Hicks and Upton) on October 26, 2012, our inaugural Family Weekend. The acorns were most abundant that year. We eagerly gathered a couple dozen freshly fallen seeds, thinking that it would be sweet to have living tokens of Gabe’s new home at our old home. It was when planting them back on Whidbey Island that I thought they’d be a great gift to give to Gabe’s friends and classmates upon graduation. My sentimental notion was evolving.

Had I been successful that first year, I would have needed a moving truck to bring the seedlings back to Kalamazoo in 2016, but Mother Nature was wise. None of those acorns seemed to germinate. Perhaps they’d been eaten by our own squirrels, or the seeds suffocated in transit, or they needed a harder freeze to activate.

By the time of our second Family Weekend I had spent endless hours studying the horticultural requirements for successful white oak acorn germination. My hypothesis was that the weather in the Maritime Northwest was too temperate for seeds that thrived in Midwest winters. So I tried refrigerating our next harvest of Kzoo quad acorns, storing them just above freezing for two months, then planting them in the early spring.
Mother Nature got a good laugh out of that experiment. Out of another dozen acorns, none seemed to survive. Apparently that theory was not ready for publication.

With Gabe in Budapest for study abroad in 2014, we had no Kzoo acorns to plant.

Our final Family Weekend, around Halloween 2015, yielded a moderate number of healthy acorns, all gathered from the same eastern end of the quad. The squirrels seemed more corpulent and the available seed stock harder to find, but we all searched. When I got these back to Whidbey, I took a minimalist approach, planting each acorn in a one-gallon pot. Thinking perhaps my first year’s failure might have been attributable to predation, I built cages to keep them safe from squirrels, chipmunks, deer and rabbits.

Eureka! Despite our very mild winter, shoots began to break the soil in March. By the time we were finalizing our Kalamazoo Commencement plans, we had nearly a score of foot-tall white oak seedlings. I decided I would drive a dozen of them from Seattle to Kalamazoo so we could give them to Gabe’s friends as living tokens of their four years at K.

Men plan and God laughs, they say. And men plant and chipmunks grin. Nature did get one more giggle before I reached Kalamazoo. When Brenda and I stopped in Chicago, I placed our dozen seedlings in a sunny spot protected from the deer that roamed the neighborhood. Some wily chipmunks smelled a feast and eviscerated half the crop from their pots, so we were left with just six to give as gifts. Gabe carefully distributed those few to his brilliant advisor, Professor John Dugas, and five other friends.

Our garden still has six authentic Kalamazoo Quad white oak seedlings, now in two-gallon pots, awaiting final placement. One I know will grow by our house, a reminder of a time and place we hold dear. One will follow Gabe wherever he lands, a symbol of where he was launched.

The choice of tree was completely dictated by heritage. If Kalamazoo’s quad was dotted with Mountain Ash, I would have planted whatever Mountain Ash seeds I could gather. The seeds had to come from the quad because they serve as a totem of the school and the educational quest. Acorns gathered elsewhere would not suffice.

The graduation card was a last-minute creative exercise. I wanted to offer a context and explanation for why Gabe’s gift was significant. I consider the Kalamazoo experience a gift that empowers its students to grow from humble soil into the light.

Gabe is passionate about learning. His hobbies have long been thinking, reading, and questioning…along with cycling, camping and rockhounding.

When it came to selecting a school, he sought a small liberal arts college where he would be challenged academically and supported emotionally, where he could build relationships with faculty and friends. His interests in international affairs, politics, philosophy and the environment were part of what lead him to select Kalamazoo College.

Gabe’s plans for his future are still evolving. He’s considering taking some time to work in his field of study, political science, possibly through a non-profit or NGO or outreach program like the Peace Corps. Gabe anticipates eventually returning to school to get a Ph.D. or J.D., but first he wants to better understand precisely where he wants to focus his energies.”

The inside of Rich’s graduation card reads: WE CELEBRATE YOUR GRADUATION FROM K, AND THE DEDICATION IT REPRESENTS. THIS WHITE OAK SEEDLING IS FROM AN ACORN FALLEN FROM ONE OF THE MANY BEAUTIFUL TREES THAT LINE KALAMAZOO’S QUAD. IT IS A SYMBOL OF A TIME AND A PLACE FOREVER DEAR TO OUR HEARTS. WE HOPE YOU WILL GROW LIKE THESE TREES, FULL OF STRENGTH AND POWER AND LIFE’S MAJESTY.

Kalamazoo College Commencement is June 12 at 1 p.m.

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Grace and Pan

Kalamazoo College’s 2016 Commencement takes place Sunday June 12 at 1:00 p.m. on the campus Quad. Speakers include international human rights lawyer, activist and scholar Gay McDougall, Award-winning author Bonnie Jo Campbell, and graduating K senior Mindze Mbala-Nkanga.

Approximately 300 members of the K class of 2016 will receive Bachelor of Arts degrees.

K President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran will welcome the graduates – along with approximately 2,500 family members and friends, K faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and community members – in what will be her final commencement as K president. She retires from her post on June 30 after 11 years.

ichard Koenig 74Gay McDougall will be the 2016 commencement keynote speaker. She is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School, Fordham University, New York City. Her long and noteworthy career has been dedicated to fighting racial oppression both in the United States and abroad. She is former United Nations Independent Expert on Minority Issues, former Executive Director of Global Rights at Partners for Justice, and former Director of the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

ayMcDougall_WP
Gay McDougall

In 1999, McDougall was a recipient of the coveted MacArthur “Genius” Award. She has also received the Butcher Medal of the American Society of International Law for outstanding contributions to human rights law and the Thurgood Marshall Award of the District of Columbia Bar Association among numerous other national and international awards.

McDougall received a J.D. degree from Yale Law School and an LL.M. degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has Honorary Doctors of Law degrees from Georgetown University Law Center, the School of Law of the City University of New York, and Agnes Scott College.

McDougall will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from K during commencement.

Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell

Bonnie Jo Campbell will also speak at commencement. Campbell is the author of Once Upon a River, Women and Other Animals, Q Road, the just-released Mothers, Tell Your Daughters, and the National Book Award nominated American Salvage. In 2012, Once Upon a River was the Summer Common Reading book for the incoming class of 2016. Campbell spent two days on campus meeting with class members as part of their new student orientation program. Per K tradition, she returns to address this same class of students at their commencement.

Campbell is a Michigan native and resident of Kalamazoo who has served as a visiting professor of English at K. She received her B.A. degree from University of Chicago and both a M.A. degree in mathematics and M.F.A. degree in writing from Western Michigan University, in Kalamazoo.

During Commencement, Bonnie Jo Campbell will receive a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from K.

2015-2016 President’’s Student Ambassadors, Kalamazoo College, Erin Butler ’18; Francisco “Franky” Cabrera ’16; Bianca Delgado ’17; Alexis Fiebernitz ’16; George Fishback ’17; Immanuel “Manny” Greene ’16; Madeline “Maddie” Hume ’16; Elyse Kaplan ’18; Mindze Mbala-Nkanga ’16; Nirmita “Mira” Palakodaty ’18; Brian Raetz ’16
Mindze Mbala-Nkanga ’16

Graduating K senior Mindze Mbala-Nkanga will be this year’s student graduation day speaker. Mbala-Nkanga is from Ypsilanti, Mich., and will receive a B.A. degree in biology. Her Senior Independent Project (a K graduation requirement) was “Mother Anopheles: Of Malaria and Other Infections,” a play in two acts, for which she received honors. During her four years at K she completed an internship at Monroe Carell Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University and second at a hospital in Libreville, Gabon. She also served as president of the student organization Kalama-Africa, member of the Student of Color Coalition, and President’s Student Ambassador.

Graduating K seniors Sarah Wallace, Dylan Polcyn and Kaeli Peach will speak at Baccalaureate on Saturday June 11, at 8:00 p.m., in Stetson Chapel. K Baccalaureate is a nondenominational service with student and faculty speakers and musical performances.

Commencement Start Time Delay

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COMMENCEMENT TIME CHANGE!

Due to weather considerations, the start of Kalamazoo College’s 2015 commencement ceremony has been postponed to 2:15 p.m. The location remains THE QUAD.

Seniors should report to Stetson Chapel at 1:30 p.m. for set-up and processional line-up. The ceremony will begin at 2:15 p.m.

Seniors, please let your parents know about the change of time. Please tweet and re-tweet that information about the change of time can be found at www.kzoo.edu.

Kalamazoo College grad Raven Fisher hopes to change children’s futures, one math problem at a time

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Kalamazoo College graduate Raven Fisher at Dewing Hall
Raven Fisher ’14

Raven Fisher ’14 has now begun her studies at Western Michigan University as a prestigious W.K. Kellogg Foundation Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellow. The Detroit native and University Liggett High School graduate was a math major at K. Her goal is to teach middle school math. Raven excelled in many areas at K both in and out of the classroom. She was very active in the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement. In both her sophomore and senior years, Raven, and her classmate Roxann Lawrence ’14 served as Civic Engagement Scholars who co-led the Community Advocates for Parents and Students at Interfaith Homes, a tutoring program that hopes to ensure that all students, no matter their economic circumstances, can take advantage of the Kalamazoo Promise, which offers free college tuition to any Kalamazoo Public Schools graduate.

 

Journalist Ray Suarez Will Deliver K’s 2014 Commencement Address, Receive Honorary Degree

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Female graduate hugging a well-wisherVeteran journalist Ray Suarez will deliver the 2014 Commencement address at Kalamazoo College on Sunday June 15, in a ceremony beginning at 1:00 p.m. on the campus Quad. Suarez will address approximately 300 members of the Class of 2014 and receive an honorary degree (Doctor of Humane Letters) from the College. Ms. Xinyu Hu ’14 will also address the graduates in her role as senior speaker.

The event is free and open to the public. The College sets up about 3,000 chairs on the Quad, but guests are invited to bring a bag chair or a blanket to stretch out on the grass. The weatherman says no rain! But just in case, Anderson Athletic Center on Academy is the alternate site. Unfortunately, the gym can only accommodate the graduates, some of their family members, and K administrators/faculty, and we use a ticketing process for that. Parking will be in high demand, so give yourself extra time.

For those unable to attend, K Commencement will be livestreamed.

Suarez is the permanent host of the Al Jazeera America daily program “Inside Story.” He joined the new American news channel in November 2013 after an extensive television and radio career in which he excelled at delivering, as Al Jazeera America president Kate O’Brian put it, “compelling coverage of the most challenging news stories and events with objectivity and depth, punctuated by Ray’s own brand of thoughtful analysis. That’s exactly what ‘Inside Story’ is all about.”

Suarez came from PBS’ “NewsHour,” where he worked from 1999 to 2013, most recently as its chief national correspondent. He also served as the lead correspondent for the program’s global health coverage, reporting on some of the world’s most threatening health crises from Africa, Latin America and Asia. Before joining PBS, he hosted National Public Radio’s “Talk of the Nation” for six years.

The Brooklyn native who now lives in Washington, D.C. is the author of the critically acclaimed “Latino Americans,” the companion book to the PBS documentary series of the same name, published in September 2013. He also is the author of “The Holy Vote: The Politics of Faith in America” and “The Old Neighborhood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration” and has contributed to several other books.

A Commitment to Human Depth

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Rachel Kushner with her 1964 Ford Galaxie 500
Rachel Kushner with her 1964 Ford Galaxie 500.

Rachel Kushner, the 2009 Summer Common Reading author, returned to Kalamazoo College for the 2013 commencement, where she received an honorary degree (Doctor of Humane Letters) and delivered an important speech about the future and “movements of the young.”

Kushner asked the Class of 2013 many questions. The most important: “How has this experience of college formed you, and what does it mean, at this intersection of your past, and future?” Kushner compared time to water, always flowing, changing us gradually.

She emphasized the importance of books throughout the course of her speech. “By reading books, you can understand greater patterns in the movement of people through history, even history that you never witnessed yourself.”

Kushner’s talk posited a hypothetical Q & A, the questions of which touched on current news, the young, and novels. A sample question: “Was Occupy, the Arab Spring, the anti-austerity movements across Europe, and in Greece, and now in Turkey—all, by the way, historical events that happened while you were in college—were these essentially movements of the young, but about and including, a whole spectrum of people? —Yes”.

She closed with advice on how to enter the world of art, knowledge, and love. One must commit to “human depth–beyond jobs, profits, debt, petty differences, résumés, and grad school applications. Read, and live engaged with ideas. No matter what happens in your life, no one can take that away from you”.

For 13 years the College’s Summer Common Reading program has brought to campus writers of startling renown. Kushner is no exception, after she became a New York Times Bestseller with her novel from the Summer Common Reading, Telex from Cuba. She’s now making a splash in the literary world with her new novel The Flamethrowers.

The Flamethrowers takes place in the 1970’s. The protagonist is a woman in her early 20s, nicknamed Reno. She moves to New York to become an artist, and there falls in love with an Italian man, and with motorcycles; she quickly becomes the “fastest chic in the world.”

Kushner was born in Eugene, Ore., and graduated from the University of California-Berkley, majoring in political economy. After Berkley, Kushner headed to Columbia University to earn her Master of Fine Arts degree.

She now lives in Los Angeles. She drives a ’64 Ford Galaxie 500, much like the ride of her character, Reno.

Kalamazoo College Commencement 2013

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Students tossing graduation caps in the airKalamazoo College will host Commencement for the Class of 2013 on Sunday, June 16, at 1:00 p.m., on the campus Quad. About 3,000 people are expected to attend the event, which is free and open to the public.

A total of 344 graduates from 27 states and eight foreign countries (China, Ecuador, Haiti, Hong Kong, Jamaica, South Korea, Thailand, Zambia) will receive Bachelor’s of Arts degrees in 30 majors; 65 graduates are double-majors. Approximately 55 percent of class members are female, 45 percent are male, and more than 19 percent self-report as students of color.

For the first time, the K Commencement will be live-streamed via the Internet. Visit the Kalamazoo College Commencement webpage (www.kzoo.edu/alumni/commencement) on Sunday, June 16, at 1:00 p.m. to watch the ceremony live.

On Saturday, K hosts a Senior Awards Program at 1:30 and a baccalaureate service at 8:00 p.m. for seniors and their families in Stetson Chapel.

Graduating senior Regina Pell was chosen by her K classmates to deliver Commencement remarks on their behalf. Pell is a history major from Grand Rapids who studied abroad at Goldsmiths University in London as a junior. She also completed one concentration in American Studies and a second in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Walter E. Massey, Ph.D., will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary doctorate of science degree. Dr. Massey is president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a post he assumed in the fall of 2010. He is also the president emeritus of Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, having served as president there from 1995 to 2007. Immediately prior to that post, he was provost and senior vice president for academic affairs of the University of California system. A prominent physicist, Dr. Massey served as director of the Argonne National Laboratory from 1979 to 1984, and was professor of physics and vice president of research at the University of Chicago from 1979 to 1991. He also served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1991 to 1993, appointed by former President George H.W. Bush. Additionally, he served as professor of physics and dean of the college at Brown University.

Rachel Kushner, author of Telex from Cuba and the recently published The Flamethrowers, will also receive an honorary doctorate of humane letters degree and speak to K seniors. Kushner was the Class of 2013’s Summer Common Reading author and spoke to class members during their fall 2009 orientation at K. At the time, Ms. Kushner was a finalist for the National Book Award and for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and was a winner of the California Book Award. Kushner earned a B.A. degree from the University of California in Berkeley and a Masters in Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Along with her novels she has written numerous features for ArtForum, edited the infamous literary magazines Grand Street and BOMB, and founded Soft Targets, a magazine devoted to art, literary theory, poetry, and fiction. She is a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow.