faculty

Winter Term Ethnic Studies

Posted on

Dr. Reid Gómez, the Melon Visiting Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies, has designed a series of winter term programs and web pages and prompts as a collective resource for a campus-wide conversations on the matter of ethnic studies. For many of these conversations the general public is welcome as well. The series begins with a lecture (Thursday, January 9) titled “What is Ethnic Studies?”  Gómez will give the lecture twice–at 4:10 PM and at 7 PM–in the Mandelle Hall Olmsted Room.

“Conversations about ethnic studies at K have been taking place since 1968,” says Gómez. “Recently a renewed movement and rising range of voices reflect the desire for a further exchange of ideas.”

Features on the ethnic studies website will serve to deepen that exchange. The features include a bookshelf, several faculty discussions, a blog for the K community, a calendar of events (programs occur every week of the 10-week term), and a series of conversations. For the latter, the campus community will be called to join several invited participants to discuss a particular theme, reading, or video prompt. Gómez will moderate. “We will sit in concentric circles (one inside, and the other outside),” says Gómez.  “The participants will take their place in the center, and we will leave several chairs open, should someone catch the spirit and chose to formally join the conversation. People may enter and exit the conversation at will, and they may choose to participate in silence, while listening. Everyone in the outside circle will have the opportunity to listen in.  Near the end, we will turn the circles inside out for the opportunity to debrief, and review the places our conversation lead us.  Opportunities for follow-up conversations will take place on the ethnic studies blog.”

Winter Term Will Open January 8

Posted on

Kalamazoo College will open for winter term classes on Wednesday, January 8. The Wednesday schedule of classes will be in effect.

Some students and faculty members may not be able to reach campus by Wednesday. Everyone should provide the greatest degree of flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via email with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.

The campus is in good shape for pedestrian traffic, thanks to the excellent work by the Facilities Management team. Please check weather reports throughout the week (especially for Wednesday) and dress appropriately.

Winter Quarter Opening UPDATE

Posted on

Pedestrian traffic conditions on campus are good and we anticipate opening winter quarter on Tuesday, January 7. That said, we will continue to monitor the weather, surrounding transportation conditions, and campus parking in order to make a final decision tonight or early tomorrow morning regarding the opening of winter quarter.

We will inform students, faculty, and staff of that decision tonight or early tomorrow morning.

Even if we do commence winter term classes tomorrow (Tuesday, January 7) we will ask that all faculty and students provide the greatest flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via e-mail with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.  Staff: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your supervisor.

We know that there has been a great deal of disruption in travel, especially airline and bus cancellations.  We ask that everyone use appropriate discretion regarding their travel plans and make your return to campus when you feel it is safest to do so.

College Will Be Closed on January 6

Posted on

Due to the weather emergency, Kalamazoo College will be closed on Monday, January 6. Only essential employees should report to campus.

Dining Services will be open for students.

Winter quarter will open on Tuesday, January 7, WITH TUESDAY’S CLASS SCHEDULE. Students are encouraged to check their e-mail accounts often because faculty may choose to contact students via e-mail with information pertinent to classes.

Additional snow is predicted for Sunday night and into Monday. Frigid temperatures are in the forecast. Everyone should try to stay inside, stay warm, and stay safe.

Weather and Winter Quarter Start

Posted on

We have been carefully monitoring the weather conditions locally as well as regionally and nationally.  Facilities Management staff have focused their priorities today on clearing roads and parking lots as well as areas around residence halls and the Hicks Student Center.

We have not yet made a determination whether classes will be postponed tomorrow, but we will do so later today or early tomorrow and will communicate any postponement via the K-Alert system as well as on the College website.  We know that there has been a great deal of disruption in travel, especially airline and bus cancellations.  We ask that everyone use appropriate discretion regarding their travel plans and make your return to campus when you feel it is safest to do so.

Even if we do commence winter term classes tomorrow,  we will ask that all faculty and students provide the greatest flexibility, understanding that some may be delayed in their return.  Students: if you are not able to be in class, please communicate via email with your professors to let them know.  Faculty: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your students.  Staff: if you are unable to make it to campus, please notify your supervisor.

Thank you for your understanding, and please be safe.

– President’s Staff

College Honors Legacy of Nelson Mandela

Posted on

If ever there was a human being for whom the descriptor of sublime applied, that person is the late Nelson Mandela. His magnanimity was nonpareil; as was his capacity to unite that which seemed irrevocably divided. “It is with heavy hearts that we mourn the passing of the former South African President,” said Lisa Brock, academic director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Brock knows the Mandela family, and she was interviewed about his legacy by WWMT-TV, WOOD-TV, Kalamazoo Gazette/MLive, WKZO radio, and the Chicago Tribune.

Mandela died on Thursday, December 5, at the age of 95. “After serving 27 years as a South African political prisoner on the infamous Robben Island, he emerged as a symbol of freedom to millions worldwide,” added Brock. “Revered as a hero and human rights leader, he will be dearly missed.” In honor of his legacy, the College will hold a vigil on Friday, December 6, at noon in front of Stetson Chapel. All are welcome.

David Barclay, the Margaret and Roger Scholten Professor of International Studies, shared his personal encounter with Mandela. “It was almost exactly twenty years ago, in 1993. I was sitting in Johannesburg airport, waiting to change planes,” Barclay wrote. “As I recall, it was a very long wait, and I was trying to finish some work. I vaguely noticed a group of four or five individuals as they sat down in the seats next to mine; but, as one does in airports, I didn’t pay any particular attention to them, continuing instead with my work. At one point I lifted my head and looked over at them, and suddenly I noticed that one of them was Nelson Mandela. I couldn’t help myself. I decided to be a crass American tourist and ask him for his autograph. I began to search for a blank piece of paper, and all I could find was the reverse side of a set of Kalamazoo College faculty meeting minutes! So I walked up to him and asked if I could bother him for his autograph. He very graciously stood up, asked me my name, and signed the K faculty minutes! We then spoke for about five or 10 minutes. I was a nobody, an autograph-seeker, a complete stranger, yet he spoke to me as though I were actually important. I was immensely impressed. This was in 1993, three years after his release from prison and one year before he became president, and he had absolutely no security detail of any kind. It turned out that he and his colleagues were waiting for another group of colleagues who were arriving on a delayed flight from London. At the head of that group was Thabo Mbeki, who succeeded Nelson Mandela as president in 1999. So on that day, purely by coincidence, I saw two future presidents of South Africa.”

Hands-On HOPES

Posted on

Regina_Stevens-TrussRegina Stevens-Truss, the Kurt D. Kaufman Associate Professor of Chemistry has written an article updating an idea of hers and the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology: the HOPES Initiative. HOPES pairs teachers with working scientists so that together they could provide hands-on opportunities to students. “We didn’t anticipate the sweeping impact the program would have across the nation,” wrote Stevens-Truss in the update. The HOPES initiative has resulted in 27 partnerships in 22 cities across the U.S. and has affected the education of more than 3,600 fourth- through 12th-graders.

An Archaeology of Yearning

Posted on

Book cover for An Archaeology of YearningKalamazoo College Professor of English Bruce Mills’s fifth book, An Archaeology of Yearning, has been published by Etruscan Press. Using the metaphor of an archeological dig, Mills maps the artifacts of life as a father of a son with autism and as a boy himself growing up in Iowa. Of the book, Carolyn Kuebler, editor of the prestigious New England Review, writes: “This urgent and affecting memoir of parenthood is also a testimony to the way acts of imagination can lead us out of isolation and into communion with others, however tentative.” Ginger Strand ’87, author of Inventing Niagara: Beauty, Power, and Lies and Killer on the Road: Violence and the American Interstate, states that Mills “has written a rare and grace-filled book, one as true to reality-bound family life as it is to the soaring speculative beauty of archaeology, history, and thought. We come away with a deeper understanding of what it is to be a parent, a family, and finally, a human being.” Information about the book and upcoming events, including a reading on Tuesday, November 12, 7-8 pm, at Chelsea (Michigan) Public Library can be found on Mills’s blog.

Bruce Mills appeared on WWMT-TV Ch. 3 on Sunday Nov. 24 to discuss his book.

Michigan Radio broadcast an interview with Prof. Mills on Jan 22. Listen here: http://michiganradio.org/post/one-michigan-familys-journey-autism

Saved Seven Times Before the Age of Five

Posted on

Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss ’78 will have her third volume of poems, Four-Legged Girl, published in 2015.

Her first collection was It Blows You Hollow, and her second, Wolf Lake, White Gown Blown Open, received the Juniper Prize for Poetry.

Last month Seuss was interviewed by Missouri Review intern Anne Barngrover for the Review’s Text Box anthology (October 15). It’s a fascinating read, much like a Di poem: “Four-Legged Girl is specifically concerned with embodiment, beauty, loss, addiction and desire,” says Seuss. “Maybe it is post-body, post-beauty, post-grief, post-addiction, post-desire. I think so. I believe it is located more outside the boundary of community than my other books; its imagination is more iconoclastic, arriving at ferocity, femaleness, freakishness, and solitude–which to me is poetry.”

The interview touches on the treatment of religion (“I tried to be Catholic about the same year as I got breast buds.”), female sexuality (“The four-legged girl’s lonely freakishness is a signal of her monstrous royalty.”), and the recurrence of the name “Mary” throughout her work (“…maybe the four-legged girl is named Mary. I think my notion of the goddess has gotten a lot racier. But in tandem with that raciness is an omnipresent grief.)” The reader also learns a great deal about the College’s resident writer’s writing process–“I have never been someone who writes daily….There is a window of opportunity in which I know all and see all from the poem’s point of view and language palette….Once the window closes, I’m lost. Out of that lostness, when it’s just me and the dog and the nameless stars, comes the next poem.”