Curtiss is the ICC student intern working out of the Christian health development organization’s headquarters in downtown Kalamazoo this summer. ICC is partnering with the Warrior Dash II mud run in Walker, Mich., near Grand Rapids on an event in September, and Curtiss has been charged with getting the word out. So she laced up her running shoes and has been running the streets of Kalamazoo to deliver news releases to Kalamazoo-area news media, running clubs, and anyone else who will listen.
She encourages everyone to join ICC′s Labou Pou Timoun (Creole for “Mud for Kids”) running event to help raise money for ICC’s childhood poverty and health initiative in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The mud run, held September 21, is a 3.1-mile obstacle course that includes man-made obstacles and “tons of mud,” she says.
Susanne Curtiss ’14
Working with ICC on the mud run has been Curtiss′s first real public relations experience and the English major (with a business minor and concentration in media studies) loves it.
“The work that ICC does is really inspiring, and I feel very honored to be able to spend my summer working to promote the organization and its international projects and involvements” said Curtiss.
ICC operates in both the Dominican Republic and Haiti with a children′s hospital and another that serves tuberculosis patients. It’s working to change the conditions of poverty that impact health and well-being in those countries.
Curtiss′s classmate, Zoe Beaudry ’14, also has an internship with ICC and will head to Haiti in August to work at ICC′s Grace Children’s Hospital on art projects with the patients. At the end of her six weeks there, she will compile the projects into a photo book for distribution in Haiti and back in Kalamazoo.
Four Kalamazoo College students will be participating in the Monroe-Brown Foundation’s internship program during the summer of 2013. The group is one of the largest K cohorts ever for this competitive program.
The paid internships are augmented with $5,000 scholarships following successful completion. The Center for Career and Professional Development promotes this program alongside its own Field Experience Program and has been building K students’ participation in both.
This year’s Monroe-Brown internship class from K (and the companies where they will work) are: Cassie Thompson ’14, Abraxas; Mark Ghafari ’14, Eaton Corporation; Giancarlo Anemone ’15, LKF Marketing; and Emerson Talanda-Fisher ’15, Parker Hannifin. Interestingly, three of the four participate in intercollegiate athletics–Ghafari in basketball; Anemone and Talanda-Fisher in soccer.
David Landskroener ’14, Marianne Stine ’12, and Oscar ’13 getting the red carpet treatment.
David Landskroener ’14 is a self-described “movie junkie.” So when he won two coveted tickets to sit on bleachers alongside the famed red carpet at this year’s Oscar extravaganza in Los Angeles…well, it was a Hollywood ending.
“It was cool to see Anne Hathaway and George Clooney in person,” said David, a double major in Theatre Arts and English who also has a concentration in Media Studies where he’s learning about film.
Even cooler, he said, was when the interviewer in front of him pulled up K alumnus David France ’81 to talk about ‘How to Survive a Plague,’ his Oscar-nominated documentary.”
“He gave an insightful interview and seemed really at ease. It was so awesome to have that K connection on the red carpet, with me, a current student, only thirty feet away. K people are everywhere!”
David made the trip to LA from his home near Minneapolis where he’s been since returning from study abroad in Aberdeen, Scotland. K friend Marianne Stine ’12 joined him in a long security check-in process and a seven-hour wait in the bleachers before the stars came out.
“Luckily we had food and drink provided the entire day, and we got to watch the actual awards ceremonies from the nearby El Capitan Theatre. We both held an actual Oscar, and are those things heavy!”
Prior to his view from the bleachers, David’s most meaningful glimpse into a possible future career came during summer 2012 when he served an externship through the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development at The Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, a nonprofit institute that develops new plays and nurtures playwrights. He stayed with Bethany (Kestner) Whitehead ’98 who works at The Playwrights’ Center.
“It was a great opportunity for me to see that a career in that field is possible and how to work towards it. Staying with Bethany and learning about her career was just as rewarding and instructive as working at the Center itself.”
Although he looks forward to being back on campus this spring to continue his classroom and extracurricular studies, David said he also looks forward to returning to the Oscars one day, not for a seat in the bleachers, but for the full red carpet treatment.
“Studying English, theatre, and film myself, I dream of someday walking down that same carpet.”
Two new reports recently released by the Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) document an increase in student and alumni use of CCPD programs and chart the first post-graduate destinations of the Kalamazoo College class of 2012. The 2012 CCPD Annual Report is the unit’s first. CCPD has conducted “Life After K” surveys since 2009. Highlights of the two reports include the following findings.
Of the reporting 2012 graduates seeking employment, 80 percent had secured it by the end of the calendar year.
Of the reporting 2012 graduates seeking graduate education, 95 percent had secured it by year end.
The CCPD supported 98 students’ career development opportunities in summer 2011, including 30 externships and 68 internships.
Alumni engagement in CCPD programs and services rose by 40 percent in 2011-12.
Membership in the Guilds of Kalamazoo College, as measured by new additions to the group on LinkedIn, grew by 554 individuals, or 42 percent, in 2011-12.
Sarah Allexan ’11 is the lead author of a research paper published in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics that looks into the cause of blindness in Mary Ingalls, older sister of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the popular “Little House” book series.
Ingalls Wilder wrote that Scarlet Fever caused her sister to lose her eyesight. Allexan and her research team determined otherwise. Their findings have attracted a lot of news media attention, including an article in USA Today and an article in the New York Times. Sarah also participated in an interview with WMUK radio (102.1 FM), the NPR affiliate at Western Michigan University.
Originally from Englewood, Colo., while at K, Sarah majored in biology, studied abroad in Ecuador, ran on the Hornet cross country team, and sang in the Limelights student a cappella group. She also served as a bi-lingual tutor for first-graders at a Kalamazoo Public School, and completed both an internship at the Seattle Aquarium and an externship at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
Shortly after her K commencement, she took a job as a research assistant at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While there, she became involved in the Ingalls research project.
“It was fun tracing Laura’s journey and playing medical detective,” Sarah said. “This was my first real exposure to lineal reasoning and prepared me well for medical school.”
Sarah is now enrolled at University of Colorado School of Medicine. “But I bleed ‘Orange and Black!’” she said.
Winter term 2013 finds sophomore Kate Belew working as an intern at the Poet’s House in lower Manhattan. Another stop on the creative journey of this English major. As a first-year student Kate received the Nature in Words Fellowship at Pierce Cedar Creek Institute for Environmental Education (Hastings, Mich.).
“It is an extraordinarily competitive fellowship,” says Kate’s mentor and Kalamazoo College’s Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss. “And Kate made the most of the opportunity with her project, ’Voicing the Natural.’” According to Kate, the project sought to speak through the plants and animals she encountered during summer at the institute. “I planned to create the project using persona poems, inspired by Conrad Hilberry’s collection of poems, The Fingernail of Luck,” says Kate. “As I wrote, the project shaped itself into sections, and finally into a collection of poems that I named But That Was In A Different Life.” The poems are threaded together by Wild Woman, a voice of nature within a female human. Explains Kate: “I walked the trails, read books of poems, took notes, worked with Di, and took the time to witness what was happening in the natural world.”
Kate has also published poems in national magazines: “Prairie” in Outrageous Fortune; “Spoon Out Indigo” in Cliterature (on online magazine founded and edited by K graduate Lynn Brewer ’05); and “Yarrow” in the print magazine Straylight.
On the program’s fifth anniversary, the Guilds of Kalamazoo College announced the addition of two new guilds and the re-christening of two others. An open house to celebrate this growth and evolution will occur Wednesday, January 9, from 6 PM to 8 PM in the Center for Career and Professional Development resource room on the first floor of Dewing Hall. Birthday cake will be served, and attendees will get first look at the summer 2013 internship and externship opportunities. The Guilds are active communities of engaged professionals—apprentices and masters—supported by the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD). Membership in the Guilds groups on LinkedIn has surpassed 1,500 individuals, including more than 1,000 K alumni. The names of two Guilds have changed—the Justice & Peace Guild becomes the Nonprofit & Public Service Guild, and the Sustainability Guild becomes the Science & Technology Guild. The Nonprofit & Public Service name reflects the life work of the majority of that Guild’s members, allowing apprentices and masters to more easily recognize their career paths within that Guild. The Science & Technology Guild creates a Guild home for a group of students and alumni professionals that until now hadn’t determined where they fit in the Guilds. The two name changes in no way undermine those Guilds’ engagements with matters of peace, justice, and sustainability. Says CCPD director Joan Hawxhurst: “The CCPD remains committed to those core ideals. Working with Guilds members we will bring these topics into conversations across all Guilds.” The new “all” includes two new entities: the Education Guild and the Arts & Media Guild. The Business Guild, Health Guild, and Law Guild complete the magnificent seven. CCPD will continue to work with the Environmental Studies concentration to co-host the annual Sustainability SIP Symposium, which showcases senior research that aligns with professional pathways in multiple Guilds. And, says Hawxhurst, “We also will continue to partner with the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership to address social justice issues across all the Guilds.”
The average student debt with which some K students graduate “is comparable to a new Ford Focus,” Kalamazoo College President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran said today. “That Focus depreciates the minute you drive out of the dealer,” she added. “But that degree continues to appreciate over time.” Wilson-Oyelaran spoke as a member of a panel discussion on higher education topics sponsored by the Kalamazoo Regional Chamber of Commerce. She was joined by the presidents of Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
Roxann Lawrence (left) and Amy Jimenez (right) with a young patient in Haiti.
Kalamazoo College juniors Roxann Taneisha Lawrence and Amy Jimenez recently had what Roxann calls “a life changing experience,” courtesy of the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD) and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL). They spent much of their summer interning at Grace Children’s Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
“Through the CCPD, ACSJL, and Grace Hospital, Amy and I were able to have one of the most rewarding summers of our lives,” said Roxann. “We were delighted to see social justice working through an international perspective.”
Here is Roxann’s account of their summer internship.
Grace Children’s Hospital is a flagship ministry of International Child Care serving children diagnosed with such things as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malnutrition. With an unparalleled dedication to changing the circumstances of the poor through preventative and curative health care, GCH/ICC is greatly appreciated for their commitment to these children and their families throughout Port-au-Prince and neighboring cities.
We were given the opportunity to work in an organization with a myriad of integrated community projects and chose to work in different departments. Bearing in mind the communication barriers, we worked with the Community Inclusion/Rehabilitation Program, human resources and public relations.
Being involved in the Community Inclusion Program was a life changing experience. We saw children and their families displaced after the earthquake in January 2010 and living in tent cities. Many of them had mental and physical disabilities. After undergoing a two-day intensive training with some physical therapists from the United States and orienting ourselves about the program and the communities it serves, we looked forward to going out in the community.
Despite the level of poverty that stared us in the face when we entered the tent cities, smiling faces greeted us in Haitian Creole “Bonjou” (Good Morning) or “Bonswa” (Good Evening), often by children playing mab (marbles). We walked passed dozens of USAID gray-colored tents packed with families and toddlers pointing at us and repeating “Blan, blan, blan!” We later learned that “blan” was Haitian Creole for foreigner. On many occasions, we were jumping from rock to rock to avoid stepping in the sewage and garbage that littered the slumped tent cities.
We conducted a number of tests with the children to see how much they have improved since their last check-up and also visited each patient once per week. It was self-fulfilling and empowering to see children responding to treatment in a positive light. Usually treated as outsiders because of superstitious beliefs in Haitian folklore, the children and their families were set on fitting in.
The people living in the tent cities were resilient and creative, despite the dilapidated housing, land and air polluted environment that surrounded them daily. On some of our visits with the nurses to the mobile clinics, we witnessed creativity at its best. With the lack of monetary resources, ICC/GCH established mobile clinics in different tent cities to accommodate families that are unable to come to the hospital. Instead, the hospital goes to them. These mobile clinics are used mainly to vaccinate and weigh babies, and educate community members about birth control methods, nutrition and sanitation. Without a standard scale to weigh the babies, community members made crème-colored cloth bags and the babies were put in them and placed on a scale that hung to a tarpaulin.
Amy and I were given the opportunity to give tours to other teams. Usually, these were North American religious-based groups who have had some form of relationship with the organization. From time to time, there were one or two persons who were returning to Haiti, but majority of the team members were new. A typical tour would consist of taking them to different departments at GCH/ICC and explaining to them the services that they provide to the community.
From public relations, we moved on to human resources, where we spent most of our time doing administrative work, from filing and retrieving information and documents to managing and string files. Something that we are really proud of was the pre-orientation package that we were asked to prepare for North American groups who were coming into Haiti. After spending countless of hours reading, observing and interacting, we made a pre-orientation packet that will now be given to all groups who are coming to Haiti through ICC.
Without a doubt, this has been the best summer of my life. It was a challenging, but nonetheless great learning experience. Other than helping me to see social justice working through an international perspective, it reinforced the importance of community participatory service to community development and change. What I have experienced working with ICC/GCH will continue to have a positive impact on me as I passionately pursue a life dedicated to serving and working with marginalized groups. I’ve thought about what I have learned here at Kalamazoo College, and it was fascinating to translate theory into actual practice. At that time, I became even more grateful for my K experience. We would recommend every K student to apply for this internship. This was a summer well spent.
Both of us are extremely thankful to CCPD and the ACSJL for providing us with this great opportunity to learn and grow as social justice leaders of today and tomorrow.
Roxann Taneisha Lawrence ’14 majors in Anthropology and Sociology with a concentration in Public Policy and Urban Affairs. From Westmoreland, Jamaica, she is currently on study abroad in Strasbourg, France. Amy Jimenez ’14 also majors in Anthropology and Sociology, with a second major in Theatre Arts. Originally from Compton, California, she is currently on study abroad in Varanasi, India. During her sophomore year, Amy was a Civic Engagement Scholar through the College’s Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Institute for Service Learning working at El Sol, a bilingual elementary school in Kalamazoo.
BASIC staff members Bruce Weston and Corey Nunnery view Ashton Galloway ’13 (seated) in action as an IT intern there.
Two Kalamazoo College undergraduates are among 39 local college and university students selected to work with Kalamazoo area businesses as part of the summer 2012 Monroe-Brown Internship cohort. Umang Varma ’15 is a marketing IT intern at LKF Marketing in downtown Kalamazoo, and Ashton Galloway ‘13 is an IT intern at BASIC in Portage.
Umang “has been the best thing ever,” says Heather Isch, vice president at LKF Marketing, a full-service advertising agency in downtown Kalamazoo. “He is such a fast learner and a quick thinker. We just love him.” Isch, who oversees day-to-day web project development for the firm, is delighted to have an undergraduate with Umang’s combination of technical skills and social savvy.
These sentiments were expressed repeatedly during a recent site visit by the CCPD. Umang’s coworkers seemed genuinely sad to know that he’d be leaving for Budapest on study abroad at the end of the summer.
During his time at LKF, Umang has contributed to the development of a number of time-sensitive web development projects. His love of debugging code earned him a role in developing the firm’s forthcoming mobile-ready customer management system as well as helping with a searchable photo gallery in a client’s WordPress site.
Ashton Galloway has “loved programming from a young age,” and at his internship with BASIC, a fast-growing Portage-based company offering integrated HR solutions to 9,000 employers nationwide, he is “getting a feel for how software development works in a small company—something you don’t get in a classroom.” Ashton has had the opportunity to do coding on a number of projects this summer, including several interrelated modules of a very large FMLA administration software platform rewrite.
Ashton’s colleagues at BASIC value the technical and soft skills he brings to their work. In addition to his experience with database development, IT Manager Bruce Weston and VP of Operations Kim Shook have appreciated Ashton’s critical thinking skills and ability to work as part of a team. Ashton has participated in project management meetings, rewritten outdated code, and taken initiative to do research on functional coding that has helped inform his work. “This summer has taught me that there’s way more planning going on in developing software than I understood before,” he says.
The Monroe-Brown Internship Program is a collaborative effort between the Monroe-Brown Foundation and Southwest Michigan First. Through a combination of applied career experience and college scholarships, the program provides local college and university students with career-building relationships with area companies, with the goal of retaining the best and brightest college graduates in southwest Michigan.
Employers independently select their interns, using their own hiring methods and criteria. Selected interns work for a minimum of 400 hours during the summer, receiving hourly wages, valuable networking opportunities, and up to $6,000 in scholarship funding.
“These are very competitive internships,” says Joan Hawxhurst, director of the College’s Center for Career and Professional Development. “This year 376 students applied for 43 positions, so local companies have their pick of the best and the brightest. We are thrilled to have two outstanding students representing the College so well this summer.”
to work at ICC′s Grace Children’s Hospital on art projects with the patients. At the end of her six weeks there, she will compile the projects into a photo book for distribution in Haiti and back in Kalamazoo.
