K’s Day of Gracious Giving is May 17

Kalamazoo College is hosting its Day of Gracious Giving on Wednesday, May 17, 2023. The annual giving day is the biggest fundraising day of the year for the College, and the entire K community is invited to come together to provide vital support for the student experience.    

Last year’s Day of Gracious Giving raised $448,353 from 1,433 donors, not including challenge matches. Contributions of all sizes supported scholarships and financial aid, faculty resources and K’s highest priorities.  

Over the last several years, the Day of Gracious Giving has been held on the same day as K’s Day of Gracious Living, a nearly 50-year Kalamazoo College tradition where student representatives select a day off, canceling classes.    

The actual date for the Day of Gracious Living—or DOGL (pronounced like doggle), as it is often referred to across campus—has always been a closely guarded surprise for students and employees, including K’s Advancement staff, who have previously planned the giving day with only a general idea of when the date might finally fall. This year, the College has decided to designate a specific date for the giving day, keeping the spirit of DOGL while adding the predictability of a more traditional giving day.  

Day of Gracious Giving benefits students in classrooms, labs and more
Contributions of all sizes toward the Day of Gracious Giving support scholarships and financial aid, faculty resources and K’s highest priorities to benefit students in classrooms, labs and more.

As for the Day of Gracious Living, it will continue to be chosen by student representatives, its date only revealed when the campus-wide email goes out and the chapel bells begin to ring, signaling to all students: set aside your books, gather up your friends and get your sunscreen and beach blankets ready.  

 “We believe that the Day of Gracious Giving encompasses the traditional spirit of DOGL—one of joy, appreciation and gratitude—whether or not it is held on the exact same day,” said Laurel Palmer, director of the Kalamazoo College Fund.  “Choosing a date ahead of time gives the College a consistent timeframe for planning and communicating about the event. We hope that this change will allow us to reach the broadest audience possible.”  

Palmer also encourages everyone in the K community to be a part of the Day of Gracious Giving, whether it’s by creating a buzz on social media to encourage participation, offering a challenge or making a donation. 

“Making a gift—of any size—on the Day of Gracious Giving helps to ensure that students are able to participate in the experiences that make the K education distinctive.” 

If you would like to give to K, please visit www.kzoo.edu/giving and place Day of Gracious Giving in the special instructions area to have your gift included as part of the day. Your contribution makes it possible for Kalamazoo College to provide brighter opportunities for K students—preparing them to shine a brighter light into the world as alumni.  

Alumni Honor Retiring Professor with Research Fellowship

Though Kalamazoo College chemistry professor Tom Smith has had 40 years to devise just the right formula for ensuring the success of his students, they’ll tell you that he had it from the very start. Alumni — led by two who were part of the first class Smith taught in the 1978-79 school year, Chris Bodurow and Bob Weinstein, both ’79 — are in the midst of a fundraising effort that has endowed the Thomas J. Smith Student Research Fellowship in Chemistry. The fund honors the retiring Smith, the Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry, by supporting an initiative he chose, and which is close to his heart: independent summer research.

Research Fellowship
As Tom Smith, the Kalamazoo College Dorothy H. Heyl Professor of Chemistry, retires after 40 years as a student favorite, some of his former students are honoring him by endowing an independent summer student research fellowship in his name.

With Min Soo Kim ’19 designated as the first recipient, the endowment drive is entering its second phase. Bodurow is personally pledging a match of up to $20,000 in contributions with the goal of expanding the number of students who receive the fellowship each summer, a priority for the College as its new strategic plan re-emphasizes the K-Plan tenets of experiential education and independent scholarship.

Testifying to the devotion Smith inspires: He has been designated an Alpha Lambda Delta National Honorary Society Favorite Teacher by first-year students 13 times since 2003. In addition, he has directed the Senior Individualized Projects of 70 students, was named a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Scholar and was awarded the Florence J. Lucasse Fellowship for Excellence in Scholarship or Creative Work and the Dr. Winthrop S. and Lois A. Hudson Award for Outstanding Contributions in Research at Kalamazoo College.

It doesn’t take a list of awards, however, to understand the influence Smith has had on students, and the profound sense of appreciation it has engendered in the more than a dozen alumni who have contributed some $130,000 for the endowment.

Bodurow and Weinstein were seniors when Smith arrived at the College, fresh from post-doctoral work at Caltech. They said Smith immediately took on a role that went far beyond just teaching chemistry.

“He really had a very strong propensity to encourage us in our studies and in our post-Kalamazoo College strategies in our lives. He quickly identified students he thought ought to pursue graduate degrees and encouraged us,” said Bodurow, who went on to earn a Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton University and has had a distinguished career in drug research. Now retired from Eli Lilly and Company, where she was senior research director, external sourcing, for the Medicines Development Unit, she is a member of the board of the American Chemical Society and is president of PharmaDOQS, a consultancy.

“Tom was very deliberate about understanding our strengths and passions and directing us,” said Bodurow. “It was all because of his strong commitment to launching us, and he made sure we had a strong post-Kalamazoo plan. It was quite extraordinary. If you talk to anyone who has had Tom as a professor, they will tell you a similar story.”

Weinstein does.

“He helped us understand what it meant to go to grad school and how to get to grad school. He was telling us what it was like and challenging us with projects,” said Weinstein, who earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is president and CEO of Robertet USA, an arm of the French-owned maker of flavors, fragrances and natural raw materials. “It didn’t take Tom Smith very long to say, ‘This is what the College is about: I will prepare these students for graduate school or medical school and really dedicate myself to helping them.’ ”

Smith, he said, “was the engine behind me. To be able to contribute to his legacy at K is a privilege that I am proud to be able to do. I honestly believe that nothing I have accomplished would have been possible without Tom Smith and K.”

Kalamazoo College President Jorge G. Gonzalez said few things are more meaningful to professors than to have former students credit them for their successes. To have them go a step further and fund an endowment in their name, he said, “is both an honor and an affirmation that you have achieved the goal motivating every educator, and that is to make a real difference in your students’ lives.”

Smith called it “humbling.”

“You think you’re getting your job done and then you discover decades later that the impact has lasted,” said Smith, an aficionado of hiking and movies, who described the honor as a fitting capstone for his career.

“So often when I say goodbye to students, I tell them, ‘Go out and make the world a better place,’ ” he said. “It becomes a lifelong interaction. That’s why we do this.”

To contribute to the Thomas J. Smith Student Research Fellowship in Chemistry, or to discuss creating an endowment in the name of another favorite faculty or staff member, contact Kalamazoo College Vice President for Advancement Al J. DeSimone at 269.337.7292 or Al.DeSimone@kzoo.edu.

 

Holiday Greetings from Kalamazoo College

Kalamazoo College logo and workmark against a snowy quadStudents walking near a snow-covered Stetson Chapel

Dear Friends:

Happy holidays and warm wishes for 2015. This is a very exciting time at K. We welcomed an outstanding class of 2018: 362 students from 30 states and 17 countries. The class is one of the most diverse in the College’s history. Thirty-two percent of its members identify themselves as domestic students of color. Ten percent are four-year degree-seeking international students. Many are the first in their families to attend college.

In September we dedicated the beautiful piece of architecture that houses our Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, and one week later the center convened its first biennial conference, gathering our learning community with social justice scholars and activists from across the globe. The purpose of the center folds beautifully into the goals of a liberal arts education at Kalamazoo College, one of which-as articulated by President Allan Hoben in the 1920s-is for each of us to identify a “charter of service” for humankind. To engage in that important pursuit, we study widely and with rigor. We cultivate the courage it requires to ask big questions and act upon the answers even if they differ from conventional wisdom. What a vibrant environment in which to live and work!

Kalamazoo College is in the final seven months of the most ambitious fund-raising campaign in its long and storied history. We are seeking to raise $125 million to support the priorities that will help ensure that the Kalamazoo College of tomorrow is every bit as strong, every bit as vibrant, and every bit as willing to grapple with the big questions, as we are today. This holiday season is a perfect time to give thanks for the incredible support we have received from alumni and friends.

I am grateful to all of you for what you do on behalf of K. You are making a difference in the lives of our students; helping them to learn and to act on their inclination to make the world a better place.

I hope you enjoy this holiday greeting. Its original music was composed by alumnus Robert Severinac ’85 as part of his Senior Individualized Project. Today, he is a renowned plastic surgeon and entrepreneur who does pro bono work with families of children with cleft palates. And he continues to enjoy and make music! The roots of such breadth and service lie in the power of the liberal arts at K.

President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran