psychology

K’s Banner Year Elates Faculty, NSF Fellows

Posted on by Andy Brown

Kalamazoo College STEM-related academic departments are celebrating a banner year as the overall number of current students and alumni receiving National Science Foundation (NSF) graduate research fellowships reaches four, the most since 2016.

The Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding students who pursue research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. A five-year fellowship covers three years of financial support, including an annual stipend and a cost-of-education allowance to attend an institution along with access to professional-development opportunities.

About 2,000 applicants are offered a fellowship per NSF competition in fields such as chemistry, biology, psychology, physics and math. This is the first year since 2013 that two current K students, Claire Kvande ’23 and Mallory Dolorfino ’23, have earned awards. Two alumni also have earned fellowships, Cavan Bonner ’21 and Angel Banuelos ’21.

“The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship is a highly competitive program that is only awarded to about 16% of the applicants, who represented more than 15,000 undergraduates and graduate students across all STEM fields,” Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Blakely Tresca said. “Approximately 2,500 awards were offered this year across all STEM fields and the vast majority of them go to students at large research universities and Ivy League schools. It is rare to see more than one or two awards at an undergraduate-focused college, particularly at a small liberal arts school like K. It is exceptional for schools in the GLCA (Great Lakes Colleges Association) to have one award in a year, and four awards is a truly outstanding accomplishment for these students.”

Claire Kvande ’23

Kvande has been a double major in physics and chemistry with minors in math and French at K. She credits faculty members such as Dow Distinguished Professor of Natural Science Jan Tobochnik and Associate Professor of Physics David Wilson, along with a wide range of courses, for preparing her to receive an NSF fellowship.

“I like the nitty gritty of sitting down and figuring out how to approach a problem within physics even though it’s often hard,” she said. “I really like work that is grounded in real-world problems and it’s part of why I’m interested in the subfield of condensed matter. There’s a lot that stands to be applied to technologies that I think could improve our world and help a lot of people.”

Kvande will attend the University of Washington this fall, where she plans to extend her Senior Integrated Project (SIP) work, which examined how charge-density waves relate to superconductivity within condensed matter.

“Superconductivity is a tantalizing physics concept,” she said. “If we could realize superconductivity at room temperature, it would allow us to do a lot with energy saving and revolutionize how we use electricity. There are schools of thought that say charge-density waves would be helpful in achieving that and others that say it would be hurtful. Since we really don’t know how superconductivity works, this is worth investigating so we can hopefully better understand this powerful phenomenon.”

NSF fellow Claire Kvande presenting her SIP
Claire Kvande ’23 will attend graduate school at the University of Washington as a National Science Foundation fellow.

Mallory Dolorfino ’23

Dolorfino, a computer science and math double major, also will attend the University of Washington, where she will pursue a doctorate in math.

“I didn’t really like math until I came to K,” Dolorfino said. “I took calculus in high school and I was just not going to take any more in college until one of my senior friends told me when I was a first-year student to take linear algebra. I took that and Calculus 3 online during the first COVID term and I just kept doing math, so I switched my major. It’s not like other subjects because you can work for hours and not get anything done. That’s frustrating at times, but it’s fun to understand it enough to prove things logically.”

Dolorfino credits several faculty members for her growth and success at K, leading to her NSF opportunity. They include Tresca, who helped students keep track of their NSF application timelines and materials; Associate Professor of Mathematics Michele Intermont, who provided letters of recommendation and application assistance for research opportunities and graduate school; and Assistant Professor of Mathematics Stephen Oloo, who provided invaluable feedback regarding her research proposal and many conversations about math.

Dolorfino remains in contact with a professor she worked with in a math-focused study abroad program in Budapest. The two of them conducted a monthlong research project in algebraic number theory, which is a foundation in applications such as encryption and bar codes. Her NSF application proposes group theory work, which is what she based some research on last summer at Texas State University. She hopes her NSF work will help her become a college professor one day. “There are a lot of math institutions on the West Coast and specifically in the Northwest, so I will have really good connections there,” said Dolorfino, who agreed the award is an honor. “I was grateful for the people at K who helped me apply.”

NSF fellow Mallory Dolorfino
Mallory Dolorfino ’23 will attend graduate school at the University of Washington as an NSF fellow.

Cavan Bonner ’21

Bonner has spent the past two years working as a research staff member in industrial and organizational psychology at Purdue University. His NSF fellowship will take him to another Big Ten school.

“My area of research involves personality development and how personality changes over the lifespan,” he said. “It’s a pretty small sub field and there are only a few doctoral programs where you can study the topic with an expert. The University of Illinois is one of them.”

Bonner further hopes the fellowship will propel his career toward a tenure-track job at a research university. He said K helped prepare him well for that trajectory through a broad range of subjects, not only in psychology, but in adjacent fields such as sociology and statistics. Bonner also credits his experience working as a research assistant for Ann V. and Donald R. Parfet Distinguished Professor of Psychology Gary Gregg, and Associate Professor of Psychology Brittany Liu for training him in skills that he frequently uses in his research work after graduation. 

“I was drawn to personality psychology because it provides an integrative framework to study many of the research questions I have about human development, aging and change over time,” Bonner said. “My SIP and research assistant experiences at K helped me realize that I could address these questions from a personality perspective, but my professors also exposed me to so many other fields and perspectives that inform my research. I primarily identify as a personality and developmental psychologist, but ultimately I hope that this fellowship helps me contribute to the broader science of aging and development.”

Portrait of Cavan Bonner
Cavan Bonner ’21 will attend the University of Illinois as an NSF fellow.

Angel Banuelos ’21

Banuelos, a biology major and anthropology/sociology minor at K, is in his second year at the University of Wisconsin, where he said he studies genetics—specifically the construction of the vertebrate brain and face—under an amazing mentor, Professor Yevgenya Grinblat.

“Live beings are built by cells that are informed by DNA,” Banuelos said. “At the beginning of embryonic development, the cells split into groups. One of those groups is called the neural crest cells. Those cells go on to contribute to a whole bunch of things such as pigment cells in the skin, and cartilage and bones in the face. My project is trying to understand how neural crest cells contribute to stabilizing the very first blood vessels of the developing eye.”

Ultimately, when his graduate work is finished, he would like to steer his career towards education.

NSF fellow Angel Banuelos in the lab
Angel Banuelos ’21, a newly-named NSF fellow, is in his second year of graduate school at the University of Wisconsin.

“I would like to bring research opportunities to people who don’t have higher education experience,” Banuelos said. “I would imagine starting with programs for middle schoolers, then high schoolers and adult learners. I want to be part of research addressing community problems and conducted by the people who live there.”

Banuelos credits inspiration for his career goals to the many mentors he had at K. Natalia Carvalho-Pinto, former director of the intercultural center, and Amy Newday, who provided guidance in food and farming justice, served as role models for applying theory to meet material needs.

“In my NSF application, I described meeting community needs as a central component of my scholarship,” he said. “Natalia and Amy are people who literally fed me while I was at K. They saw the student and the human. They handed me books, handed me plates, even welcomed my family. During a very difficult transition to grad school, they were there for me. When I’m a professor, I want to be like them. I’m grateful for the growth opportunities I had at K through the Intercultural Center and food and farming.”

‘It doesn’t happen every year’

Faculty members as a whole across STEM departments are taking great pride in these K representatives earning fellowships as it speaks to the quality of students at the College and their studies, especially as the number of recipients stands out.

“At K, it is exciting when even a single student wins a fellowship, and it certainly doesn’t happen every year,” Professor of Physics Tom Askew said. “It’s special to have four in one year.”

Restorative Justice Lessons Lead to Job Skills

Posted on by Andy Brown

Kalamazoo College is known for providing academic experiences that can lead to real-world jobs. Take the example of Steph Guyor ’22.

Guyor’s senior seminar, led by Associate Professor of English Ryan Fong, tackled the concept of restorative or transformative justice, a newer community-based practice that helps society do more than hold law breakers accountable in a criminal justice system. Instead, restorative justice also addresses the dehumanization an offender typically experiences with their punishment, offering basic services along with pathways for making amends to victims and the community, reducing the likelihood for recidivism.

“Within the U.S., justice is traditionally focused on the offender and the crime they committed,” Guyor said. “The punishments are seen as deserved. Yet by focusing on the punishment, the factors that led to the harm being committed often go unexamined, and the needs of the person who’s harmed remain unmet. Viewing punishment as the only appropriate response around accountability ends up taking the form of shame and isolation, which furthers the relational divide and deters people from changing their harmful behaviors. Restorative and transformative justice work to reorient accountability away from punishments and toward meaningful consequences that allow connections to be restored and relational dynamics to be restored.”

Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies (WGS), was intrigued by these concepts and said Fong’s class was enjoyable because it allowed her to see justice in a different way. Then came an opportunity to connect those studies to a job, when she heard Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo was hiring a restorative justice coordinator. The nonprofit organization is a secular, daytime shelter and resource center open 365 days a year that helps local residents address homelessness, poverty, substance abuse and other crises.

“I saw the posting and thought it could be an opportunity to make change locally in Kalamazoo in a way that’s influenced by getting to know people,” Guyor said. “I knew I wanted to try to find a way to integrate the psychological understanding of why people do what they do with a socially informed understanding of how social circumstances influence it.”

And today, Guyor relishes her job, which involves learning more about the restorative justice practices in place around the country while collecting data to determine what she can do to solve problems in Kalamazoo. Hopefully, that will lead to a new yet well-rounded restorative justice program at Ministry with Community that reduces the likelihood of repeat offenses.

“It comes with a lot of responsibility that a big part of me was afraid to take on given the idea that I did just graduate,” she said. “But it’s also a unique opportunity that I’m excited to have. I think the goal will be a culture shift within the organization so there will be fewer incidents with fewer people breaking community expectations, and more trust between the members, and between members and staff.”

Guyor said a common misconception about restorative or transformative justice is that it’s soft on offenders—that it lets people off the hook and fails to follow through on a punishment. She cautions against that idea.

“In reality, facing the people who you hurt and holding the space for them to explain their hurt is a lot harder,” Guyor said. “Restorative justice is about having high expectations for people along with a lot of support. It makes sure we’re holding people accountable to the changes they work toward, but not in a way that revolves around shame. In punitive settings, you’re doing things to people. In permissive settings, you’re doing things for people. But restorative justice is more about working with people to make change.”

Fong said he’s likely to continue teaching about restorative and transformative justice at K.

“So many students, especially WGS students, are interested in social justice and activism, but don’t always know what it looks like in practice beyond demonstrations and non-profit work,” he said. “In the wake of the 2020 protests and calls to defund the police, I saw many students wondering what that demand meant. Doing a deep dive into restorative and transformative justice was one way to understand how abolitionist organizers were working in concrete ways to build new systems and structures that address and eliminate violence.”

He’s also incredibly proud of Guyor and honored that he played a role in helping her find her career path.

“I hope she keeps drawing on the skills and knowledge she gained at K and as a WGS student to continue on it for the rest of her life,” Fong said. “That’s really my hope for all our WGS students: that they find meaningful ways to put their education into action.”

Donations Fund Restorative Justice Programs

Ministry with Community, a nonprofit organization, accepts donations for the restorative justice programs being built by K alumna Stephanie Guyor ’22. To donate directly to restorative justice efforts, visit the organization’s website.

Restorative justice professional Steph Guyor '22 outside Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo
Steph Guyor ’22 took classroom experiences with restorative justice and transformed them into a career at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.
Guyor, who double majored in psychology and women and gender studies at K, now works as the restorative justice coordinator at Ministry with Community in Kalamazoo.

Mental Health Pro Lauds Benefits of Gratitude

Posted on by Andy Brown
Mental Health Professional Kristin Meekhof
Kristin Meekhof ’97 is a licensed therapist, life coach, speaker and best-selling
author, who extols the benefits of gratitude in recovering from grief.

When we address our own mental health, we sometimes need to hear from people who know what it means to suffer and find their way back to personal strength.

Kalamazoo College alumna Kristin Meekhof ’97 has, for many, been an example of that recovery. Meekhof began working in the mental health profession after earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology at K and a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan. She now has more than 20 years of clinical experience and is a nationally recognized expert with published articles in and contributions to CNN, Today online, Katie Couric Media, Architectural Digest, Huffington Post, USA Today, the Chicago Tribune, Readers’ Digest, Maria Shriver Media and Psychology Today. She also has worked alongside alternative-medicine expert Deepak Chopra, M.D., F.A.C.P., and is a licensed therapist, life coach, speaker and best-selling author.

Yet before much of that, Meekhof suddenly was stricken with tragedy in 2007 when her husband, Roy, was diagnosed with adrenal cancer and died just eight weeks later. Her grief took a toll on her mental and physical health as she suddenly faced bills, single parenthood, balancing being a professional and a widow, and navigating social situations by herself. She sought out comfort and help in the form of reading material.

“I was living alone in November 2007 and I would get home from work around 6 p.m. when it was pitch black outside,” Meekhof said. “I’m not really one to watch television, so I started to read everything I could about grief and loss. It could’ve been a story of inspiration or resiliency or a medical journal about broken heart syndrome. I was really interested to see how people cope with loss and how they were able to thrive after a tragedy.”

After not finding many narratives about women specifically, she decided to travel the world and get as many stories as she could by speaking directly to women who had suffered a loss. The experience led her and a co-author, James Windell, to write A Widow’s Guide to Healing (Sourcebooks) in 2015.

“When we connect with another person’s story, it can help us find purpose and meaning as we’re inspired by others,” Meekhof said. “That meant I was traveling to Boston to meet with Christie Coombs, who tragically lost her husband on September 11 in one of the planes that crashed. I went to the backwoods in Montana where a very young widow lost her husband in a skiing accident. I went to Kenya where women live on less than $1 a day and have no running water. I went to the UK and these stories of women shaped the book. There were certain themes that really stood out like solo parenting, financial issues and relationship issues. I knew that offering practical advice was one of the ways to help women get through difficult times.”

Still, Meekhof said, none of those struggles can be wiped away when a woman simply reads the book once.

“The process is always ongoing,” Meekhof said. “The book is thematically connected, but the standalone chapters are what happens during different periods in life, whether it’s a child moving out of the home, someone suffering another loss or even happy situations like a promotion or completing a personal goal. The loss factors in and evolves in different ways, so people go back to my book or another resource because they feel a shift and want guidance.”

With the fight against grief being continual, many wonder what tools can be used to ensure some healing. Meekhof believes the best tool is gratitude.

“After a number of years, I decided that my book really wasn’t a mental health book,” she said. “It was actually completed stories of gratitude and resilience. The reason I use gratitude is there’s a lot of research that demonstrates an expression of gratitude improves one’s physical well-being. There have been studies, for example, that show heart patients who use gratitude have better outcomes over those who don’t. Before my late husband’s diagnosis, we kept a gratitude journal. It started before our marriage, and during his medical crisis, he encouraged me and us as a couple to continue our gratitude practice. It was a saving grace, because after he died, I knew I could help myself by resuming the gratitude practice. And it wasn’t until doing the research for my book that I found there was actual physical evidence that it changes one’s outlook and perspective with great implications for one’s physical and mental well-being.”

Grief and loss are intertwined with a rise in mental health concerns as people around the world have faced a loss of loved ones, periods of isolation and trauma in the era of COVID-19. The World Health Organization (WHO) identifies COVID-19 as the primary driver of a global mental health crisis that caused estimates of anxiety and depressive disorders to spike by 25% during the first year of the pandemic. Growing social and economic inequalities, protracted conflicts, violence and public health emergencies threaten to exacerbate the crisis even further with mental health services limited, disrupted or even unavailable.

That lifts the importance for World Mental Health Day, marked every October 10, to raise awareness of mental health issues around the world and mobilize efforts in support of mental health. In that spirit, and given the challenges that have faced higher-education communities since the pandemic, Meekhof has some recommendations for how Kalamazoo College can help its students.

“I would encourage the College to have a very open dialogue, for example, about something like anxiety because when we understand that anxiety is real, it becomes something that can be handled,” Meekhof said. “One can cope with it in a way that doesn’t have to be isolating or debilitating. It can help others to know that seeking professional mental health services is necessary for many and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. There’s a great stigma still about getting mental health services, that it’s a sign of weakness, that only certain people go out to get it, that once you start you’ll be dependent on it in every situation, and that’s really not the case. I would encourage faculty to take the lead and start to share their own mental health stories and guide students in that direction. It can be very encouraging for families as well so that parents and friends who notice a change in a student can encourage that student to get help.”

Looking back on her own time at K, Meekhof said the College has been the foundation for everything she does.

“It really has informed me in the way that I see the world, and offer compassion and understanding,” she said. “It was the education and the background, along with the support of professors, which enabled me to have my perspectives.”

Meekhof has another book project underway. This book is a project with Amy Young, Ph.D., of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, which will look at how language can be used to facilitate authentic leadership in business and how exceptional leaders are strong communicators. But success in her own career isn’t defined by having another book. Instead, it’s defined by helping other people.

“Success for me is feeling very confident in the fact that I’m able to offer a bit of hope in somebody’s very dark time,” Meekhof said. “If my words or the resources I can lead people to can help alleviate sorrow, I feel that is being successful.” 

From K to Kenya: Three Unite 8,000 Miles Away at UNICEF

Posted on by Andy Brown
Three K Alumnae at in front of a UNICEF poster in Kenya
Annika Rigole ’04, visiting international program alumna Sharon Musee and Paloma Clohossey
‘11 are three with Kalamazoo College connections who all work about 8,000 miles from campus
at UNICEF in Kenya.

At Kalamazoo College, international immersion and study abroad offers students opportunities to delve deep into other cultures. Along the way, they develop knowledge and skills that parlay into future careers and often form meaningful personal relationships with others around the world.

Such is the case for Paloma Clohossey ‘11, visiting international program alumna Sharon Musee and Annika Rigole ’04. Although each of them had a distinctive road in finding their way to Kalamazoo College, all three have succeeded in journeys that have taken them professionally to UNICEF in Kenya. It might seem amazing that three alumnae from a small liberal arts and sciences institution such as K all ended up at the same employer nearly 8,000 miles away. However, it makes sense that UNICEF is a desirable destination when one considers the College’s connections with foreign study and service learning.

UNICEF, originally called the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund in full, is now the United Nations Children’s Fund, an agency of the United Nations responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid to children worldwide.

The organization was established in 1946 in the aftermath of World War II to help children and young people whose lives were at risk no matter what role their country had played in the war. In cooperation with governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the private sector and others, UNICEF works to advance and protect children’s rights while providing health care, immunizations, nutrition, access to safe water and sanitation services, education, protection and emergency relief.

‘You’re the Best Female Student in Your Class’

Of the three with K connections, Musee is the only one originally from Kenya. She first attended the University of Nairobi when she began her higher education pursuits, a time that revealed her limited world experience, she said. She didn’t know there was such a thing as an exchange program that would allow her to study in the United States until she got a call from the university’s Registrar’s Office, requesting an appointment.

Musee was apprehensive about the meeting, yet her fears were soon quelled.

“It was within walking distance, so I walked over and they said, ‘do you know why we called you here?’” Musee said. “I said, ‘no, what did I do?’ They said, ‘Yes, you’ve done things, but they’re why we think you’re the best female student in your class.’”

Her recognition as an accomplished student meant Musee was empowered to attend college in the U.S. through an exchange program, and as luck would have it, the program brought her to K.

“I say it was lucky because it wasn’t something I was working for,” she said. “I was working hard to get good grades, but I was not expecting to go to K.”

Today, Musee is a partnerships and resources mobilizations officer who supports UNICEF in cultivating new public partnerships and managing its existing public partnerships.

“Being at K exposed me to a lot to multicultural settings, so I was meeting people that don’t have the same background as I do,” Musee said. “When I left K, I went back to the University of Nairobi, I graduated, and almost immediately got a job in the public sector. I kept traveling in the region. It was very easy for me to fit in if I went into Somalia or into South Sudan. If I went to speak to donors who would be people of a different race or a different culture of a different color, I would say it was very natural for me to fit in as opposed to before K. It came naturally for me as a result of K.”

‘They Immediately Bought My Plane Ticket for Me to Go Visit’

Clohossey, an English and psychology double major from California, first learned of K when her parents read about it in the book “Colleges That Change Lives” and encouraged her to visit as a result.

“When I say encouraged, I mean they immediately bought my plane ticket for me to go visit and I’m grateful to this day for all their support,” Clohossey said. “I thought there was no way I would go to college at a place called Kalamazoo. But as soon as I stepped foot on the campus, I remember having an intuitive feeling that it was going to be the place for me.”

Clohossey chose to study abroad in Africa and selected Kenya through a process of elimination. Her study abroad cohort’s visit at the University of Nairobi turned out to be when she would meet Musee—before Musee had ever arrived at K.

When Musee’s life path did curve toward K, the two became friends and they participated together in College Singers. In fact, Clohossey said their relationship makes them feel more like sisters and Musee agreed.

“We share a lot,” Musee said. “We go for random lunches. I know that if I need something quickly, I can reach out to Paloma offline—outside of the office or within the office—and I know that she’s got me. This is the sisterhood I feel knowing that we went to K.”

Clohossey says she splits her time between supporting regional program planning and regional knowledge management efforts for UNICEF.

“These functions involve things like supporting UNICEF’s annual work planning, monitoring and reporting, as well as ensuring that UNICEF is capturing, documenting, organizing and using knowledge to ensure we’re as effective as we can be as we pursue our goal of achieving results for children and protecting their rights,” Clohossey said.

The connections she has with colleagues like Musee is a big part of what makes the job special.

“Meeting again was like going back 10 years,” Clohossey said. “We were super happy to see each other.”

‘K Is Such a Special Place’

After her years as a mathematics and economics and business double major at K, Rigole—originally from Belgium and a Michigander since age 10—served in AmeriCorps where she helped nonprofits and government agencies in the southeastern U.S. alongside a team of about 10 people.

In starting her career, she embraced a passion for nurturing education. Through work with an international educational exchange organization, then grad school at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and subsequent work with NGOs in Malawi and Zambia, she helped improve access to quality education and skill-building opportunities, particularly for young girls.

“Education has always meant so much to me because I love learning and it has been so formative in my life,” Rigole said. “It was important to me that I could help others have similar opportunities.”

When she looked for a career shift toward the end of her time in Zambia, she found UNICEF. Rigole worked with UNICEF in New York for two years as a consultant strengthening monitoring, evaluation and research in education before applying for her position at the regional office in Kenya.

“As a regional office, we provide technical support to our country offices,” Rigole said. “In particular, I focus on strengthening data systems within education, and the use of data to inform decision making. It’s about having data and research speak to policy, for example so governments can better understand the differences between districts or provinces and how they’re doing in terms of equity and quality, or can learn from how some schools perform better than others.”

Rigole didn’t know Clohossey or Musee when she started at UNICEF, but that changed at a July 4 holiday barbecue.

“I didn’t know that many people yet, but I’d been invited by another colleague of ours,” Rigole said. “I was introduced to Paloma and she said she was from California. I said I was from Michigan. She said, ‘Oh, I went to college in Michigan.’ I said, ‘Oh, cool! Where?’ She said, ‘It’s a small liberal arts school.’ I said, ‘What’s the name?’ She said, ‘Kalamazoo College.’ I said, ‘I went to Kalamazoo College!’”

Rigole doesn’t work with Musee very often, although Clohossey has introduced them since. However, working with Clohossey has been special for Rigole since the moment they met.

“Immediately it felt good to have something in common with her,” Rigole said. “It’s not quite like family, but it gives you this bond because K is such a special place and shared experience.”

K Student Earns Alpha Lambda Delta Scholarship

Posted on by Andy Brown
Alpha Lambda Delta scholarship recipient Shahriar Akhavan Tafti ’24
Shahriar Akhavan Tafti ’24 is receiving a merit
scholarship from Alpha Lambda Delta.

For the first time in nearly 10 years, a Kalamazoo College student is receiving a merit scholarship from Alpha Lambda Delta (ALD), the honor society for first-year academic success.

Shahriar Akhavan Tafti ’24 will receive one of 50 undergraduate scholarships worth $1,000 to $6,000 each, as the honor society issues a total of $105,000 nationally through the Jo Anne J. Trow Award.

Akhavan Tafti is a computer science major and German and psychology minor from Iran who is looking to expand K’s involvement in Alpha Lambda Delta while collaborating with the chapter at Western Michigan University.

The Jo Anne J. Trow Award was instated in 1988 to honor a past national president of Alpha Lambda Delta. The scholarship requires that applicants gather at least two letters of recommendation and maintain a 3.5 grade-point average on a four-point scale.

“One of the reasons my application stood out was my proposed plan to expand Alpha Lambda Delta’s presence throughout our campus,” Akhavan Tafti said. “I hope to do this with the help of this year’s new ALD initiates. The end goal is to create a self-sustaining ALD organization to facilitate academic excellence and engagement with ALD, which will allow more students from our College to receive ALD scholarships for undergraduate, graduate and study abroad funding in return for their contributions to ALD.”

Houseless to Benefit from K Team’s Work

Posted on by Andy Brown

A Kalamazoo College faculty member and three of her students are among the people looking to help local houseless women and their young children achieve housing and health equity.

Visiting-Assistant-Professor-Jennifer-Mills-Helps-Houseless-Moms
Visiting Assistant Professor of
Psychology Jennifer Mills is the grant
writer for the Home Start Initiative, a
local project that aims to help
houseless women and their children.
Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson
Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson

Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Mills—with visionary assistance from Playgrown CEO Michelle Johnson—is the grant writer for the Home Start Initiative, a Kalamazoo County-backed project that will build a development of 10 homes with a park, parking area, community courtyard and more near a former makeshift houseless encampment next to the Kalamazoo River at Ampersee Avenue.

The Kalamazoo County Board of Commissioners awarded the Home Start Initiative, a collaboration between Playgrown and the Institute of Public Scholarship, more than $318,000 in April for the sake of addressing a local shortage of affordable housing. Specifically, it will help people living at or below 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI) eventually achieve ownership of the homes in the project.

Mills, an expert in the social determinants of health, said the most exciting part of the project for her is that the initiative is partnering with Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine as well as the health department and Healthy Babies Healthy Starts in Kalamazoo County to ensure that women and their children will obtain at least five of those homes. Her students then will build a research agenda around the partnership and track health outcomes.

“We know in public health that a relationship exists between housing equity and health outcomes,” Mills said. “We’re trying to intervene early to give children some of the stability that can impact those social determinants of health. We’ll be working closely with the medical school and the public health department to identify all the measures we want to track.”

A groundbreaking is expected this fall. In the meantime, students such as Janet Fernandez ’25 and Natalie Pineda ’25 will interview the houseless community from the same area at Ampersee and Hotop avenues, where they conducted interviews in a previous first-year seminar.

Natalie-Pineda-Helps-Houseless-Women-and-Their-Children
Natalie Pineda ’25

The day they first showed up for those first-year seminar interviews, Fernandez and Pineda saw community members hurrying to pick up their belongings and worrying about where they could go next with the encampment being shut down.

“I think their stories are really important because they’re often just seen as being ‘the homeless,’” Pineda said. “If we’re acting as a community of Kalamazoo, and if we’re trying to provide better housing for people who live here, the most important place to start is with their stories and asking what their needs are because they’re the ones who are living that situation.”

Taking those stories and providing equity is an important part of sustaining the community, Fernandez said. Both Fernandez and Pineda are from communities, Chicago and Los Angeles respectively, where significant numbers of people are houseless. It’s nothing new to either of them. Yet the Home Start Initiative represents the first time Fernandez has seen a project of its kind.

“We have institutions and places in our cities where houseless people can go and sleep overnight,” she said. “But you’ll never see a program like the one we’re working on, where people get to live in a house and eventually own it. Trying to build that generational wealth is incredibly important.”

One of the first measures of success for the Home Start Initiative would be improved reading scores for the children involved over the next few years.

Skyler Rogers ’23

“Within the first few years of life, a lot of the social determinants of health begin to play a role in how a child’s brain develops and how different processes in the body take place,” said Skyler Rogers ’23, a third K student participating in the project.

“Having a stable, foundational childhood can change things drastically. It can impact a child’s cognitive abilities from a young age, and that’s where third-grade reading levels come into play. By the time a child reaches third grade, you can estimate their likelihood of graduating from high school and moving forward in life.”

As their work progresses, all of K’s representatives contributing to the Home Start Initiative are taking pride in their work. It’s a big investment that might not always represent what some in Kalamazoo believe is a top priority in addressing the issue of houselessness, but Mills and her students aren’t just assuming what the houseless community needs to provide a bare minimum of support. Instead, they’re talking to people to determine their exact needs.

“It feels amazing to see this,” Pineda said. “The amenities provide lifestyle help and can really ground a person to help them get back on their feet. Any other homeless shelter can provide you with a roof over your head for one night. But this project is helping people stay stable for a long period of time. It can help you get a job. If you have children, they provide daycare. All those aspects are important and add to these stories. It’s easy to think the homeless just need somewhere to sleep. But these are people, too, who will get a chance to start their lives again with this project.”

Chemistry Student Selected as National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow

Posted on by Frances Czuk
Portrait of National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow Ola Bartolik '22
Ola Bartolik ’22 has been selected by the National
Science Foundation as a Graduate Research
Fellow to support her graduate career at the
University of Michigan.

Ola Bartolik ’22 has been selected by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as a Graduate Research Fellow to support her graduate career at the University of Michigan.

Bartolik will graduate from Kalamazoo College in June with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a biochemistry concentration and a psychology minor. In August, she will begin a Ph.D. program at the University of Michigan, where she previously participated in research in the lab of Paul Jenkins for her Senior Integrated Project.

The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in STEM disciplines who are pursuing research-based master’s and doctoral degrees at accredited U.S. institutions. The five-year fellowship includes three years of financial support, including an annual stipend of $34,000 and a cost of education allowance of $12,000 to the institution. The fellowship also provides access to opportunities for professional development.

Approximately 2,000 applicants are offered a fellowship from among more than 12,000 applicants per competition.

“I think it’s really important that students at K be aware of the fellowship,” Bartolik said. Bartolik said the application process offered experience in writing a research proposal and bolstered her grad school applications by showing she was already thinking about funding and research. While Bartolik had considered taking a gap year before entering graduate school, the combination of the fellowship offer with the community she has already found at the University of Michigan while working on her SIP proved irresistible.

“I was having a lot of doubt as to whether I could really put myself through a Ph.D. or whether I had the skills and the knowledge to do it,” Bartolik said. “If the National Science Foundation saw enough potential to invest in me, that makes me think I’m ready for grad school.

“When I posted the announcement on my academic Twitter, Paul Jenkins retweeted it, and the University of Michigan neuroscience program retweeted it, too. The head of the program emailed me that I should be really proud. I hadn’t even committed to graduate school yet and they were already celebrating with me.”

Bartolik was also quick to share the news with the chemistry department at K.

“We are very proud of Ola,” said Blakely Tresca, Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This is an amazing accomplishment for an undergraduate student before starting a Ph.D. program. Ola is the first chemistry major in 25 years to earn this honor while still a student at K.”

Bartolik will earn her Ph.D. as part of the Program in Biomedical Sciences (PIBS) at the University of Michigan, an umbrella program that comprises a variety of research fields including neuroscience, pharmacology, biochemistry and more.

“I’m really interested in trying to combine either neuroscience and pharmacology, or neuroscience and chemistry, for designing new drugs or new molecules that could be used for research or for therapeutic purposes,” Bartolik said. “My goal has always been to combine chemistry with neuroscience because I like chemistry; I don’t want to let go of it. Neuroscience can be very bio-heavy and I feel like having a chemist’s perspective on biological systems like the brain is really valuable.”

While her graduate work in PIBS is funded, Bartolik said, research opportunities can be limited based on each lab’s available funding.

“The fellowship opens me up to more lab opportunities and makes it easier to secure a spot in a lab,” Bartolik said.

At this point, Bartolik is interested in possible careers with a pharmaceutical or biomedical company as well as the field of science communication.

“Something that’s been interesting to me more and more is science communication, and how to effectively communicate science to people who don’t have the background,” Bartolik said. “The SIP was good practice; even though it was to a chemistry major audience, I still had to explain how neurons work and why this research is important. I found that I like presenting; I don’t get as nervous as I used to. And I like to geek out about my work around neuroscience, so I think that’s something I want to explore more, opportunities in journalism or some sort of science communication.”

In addition to the professional affirmation and practical benefits, the award is personally meaningful to Bartolik.

“My father passed away in 2017 from a heart attack,” Bartolik said. “He always supported me in high school, in everything I did. And I feel like he would have been so proud of me. I felt him with me, celebrating. My parents left everything behind in Poland so my sisters and I could have a better life and more opportunities. I feel like I’m fulfilling that and trying to make the most out of the life I’ve been given.

“I feel like this is what I was meant to do.”

NSF has funded Graduate Research Fellowships since 1952. More than 70 percent of fellows complete their doctorates within 11 years, 42 fellows have gone on to become Nobel laureates, and more than 450 have become members of the National Academy of Sciences. Applications are generally due in October. For more information, visit the National Science Foundation website.

K Student’s Dedication Leads to Behind-the-Scenes Work at the Olympics

Posted on by Andy Brown
Uyen Trinh Next to the Olympics Rings
Uyen Trinh ’21 stands next to the Olympic Rings in Tokyo.

It takes dedication, perseverance and determination for the world’s best athletes to reach the Olympics, just as it did for Uyen Trinh ’21 to be a part of the behind-the-scenes efforts at the Summer Games in Tokyo. She was there to gain global career experience while working as an accountant in the Finance Department of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS). 

OBS was established through the International Olympic Committee in 2001 to produce live television, radio and digital coverage of the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Organizations such as the New York Times and NBC set up, along with OBS, at Tokyo Big Sight, an international exhibition center composed of the International Broadcast Center and the Main Press Center as the Games began. 

Uyen Trinh at the Olympics
Uyen Trinh ’21 poses in front of Tokyo Big Sight, the international
exhibition center where she worked to support the Olympics behind the scenes.

Trinh, an international student from Vietnam majoring in business and psychology with a minor in Japanese at K, played important roles processing paperwork, receipts, documents and bills for the Olympic Games while stationed in the International Broadcasting Center. A typical six-day workweek involved a one-hour commute on the subway, a trip through security and working from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day with the Olympics, lasting about a month. 

Trinh gained the opportunity while studying abroad through K at Waseda University in Tokyo in 2019. At that time, a friend from the university’s Tae Kwon Do club told her about training for a position at the Olympics.  

“After Tae Kwon Do practice that night, I looked up OBS right away because it sounded like a fascinating opportunity,” Trinh said. “I found out the application deadline was a day or two later, so I filled out and submitted the application right away in one sitting.”

Uyen Trinh at the Finance Department for the Olympics
Uyen Trinh ’21 poses for a photo outside the Olympic Broadcasting Services
Finance Department where she worked during the Games.

Trinh then proceeded to interview for the accounting position.

“In the interviews, I told them I wanted to work for the Olympics because watching the Games has always given me unforgettable feelings,” she said. “And the Japanese people had been treating me really well. I thought Tokyo 2020 was a great opportunity to present Japan to the world. It was a chance for me to return the favor of their kindness and help deliver a positive image of Japan.” 

Her interest in accounting made the impression she left with her interviewers even more favorable. 

“I said that I wanted to do accounting because I’d been keeping track of my personal expenses and it really excited me to see numbers matching up,” Trinh said. “A week later I got a certificate saying I was qualified to work for the Olympics.” 

However, in March 2020, COVID-19 began spreading, forcing Trinh to leave Japan and putting the Games in doubt.

“I still kept a close eye on the Olympics and was disheartened when they decided to postpone the Games. I questioned my chances of coming back,” Trinh said. “September 2020 was the first time I heard back from them. They asked, ‘Are you still interested in working for the Olympics?’ I thought, ‘What do you mean? This is everything I have been waiting for.’ All the logistics afterward in preparation for my departure to Japan were completed via email and the OBS portal website. I received their welcome package in February 2021 with an accreditation card, which served as my visa to enter Japan. There were a lot of requirements regarding COVID that made the week before the flight especially stressful.” 

Upon her return to Japan, COVID-19 regulations required her to quarantine at a hotel for the first 14 days. She was restricted to commuting only between the hotel, OBS and a convenience store next to the hotel. After those weeks, a former host family from her time on study abroad welcomed her to stay with them.  

“I learned to treasure every relationship I had with people. You never know what kind of opportunity anyone could bring to you and what your relationship could grow to be. Most of my colleagues were from countries other than Japan like Spain, Bangladesh and Greece. It’s just wonderful to think that working for the Olympics has enabled people from all over the world to meet and get to know each other regardless of the pandemic. Returning to Japan this time also made me realize how many meaningful relationships I have made during only six months of study abroad. This whole adventure was terrific and I’m so glad I was able to make it. Different from the abrupt departure last time because of COVID, I left Japan this time in peace and with more confidence in myself. This valuable experience will set the stage for my career in finance after K.”

Kalamazoo College Welcomes New Faculty Members

Posted on by Andy Brown

Kalamazoo College is pleased to welcome the following faculty members to campus this fall:

Assistant Professor of Spanish Tris Faulkner

Assistant Professor of Spanish Tris Faulkner
Assistant Professor of Spanish Tris Faulkner

Tris Faulkner, who is originally from Jamaica, lived in Chile for about two years, working as a translator and interpreter at a prominent law firm before earning a Ph.D. in Spanish linguistics from Georgetown University. She also has professional experience as a translator and interpreter at the Embassy of Venezuela, and in similar roles at a legal firm and a business school in North Carolina.

Faulkner has lived in Spain and visited various Spanish-speaking countries, experiences which have helped her to observe the diversity that characterizes the Spanish language. Her research investigates the semantics and pragmatics of variation in verbal mood, tense, and aspect, as related to the Romance language family, English, and Jamaican Creole.

In addition to her Ph.D., Faulkner has master’s degrees from Georgetown (M.Sc. in Spanish linguistics) and Wake Forest University (M.A. in interpreting and translation studies), and a bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University (B.A. in Spanish language and literature and international studies). She will teach seminars in Spanish linguistics, as well as various other courses in the upcoming academic year.

Assistant Professor of Religion Sohini Pillai

Assistant Professor of Religion Sohini Pillai
Assistant Professor of Religion Sohini Pillai

Sohini Pillai will teach courses this academic year on religious traditions in South Asia. She is a comparatist of South Asian religious literature and her area of specialization is the Mahabharata and Ramayana epic narrative traditions with a focus on retellings created in Hindi and Tamil.

Pillai is the co-editor of Many Mahabharatas (State University of New York Press, 2021), an introduction to diverse retellings of the Mahabharata tradition in the forms of classical dramas, premodern vernacular poems, regional performance traditions, commentaries, graphic novels, political essays, novels, and contemporary theater productions. She’s also a member of the Steering Committee for the Hinduism Unit at the American Academy of Religion.

Pillai has a Ph.D. in South and Southeast Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley; a master’s degree in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies from Columbia University; and a bachelor’s degree in South Asia studies and theatre studies from Wellesley College.

Assistant Professor of Theatre Quincy Thomas

Assistant Professor of Theatre Quincy Thomas
Assistant Professor of Theatre Quincy Thomas

Quincy Thomas earned his Ph.D. in theatre and his performance studies certification from Bowling Green State University. His research centers on subjects including counter-storytelling, Black performativity in American culture, representations of the marginalized in popular culture, comedic and solo performance and performative writing. At K, he will teach directing, theatre history and playwriting, with further prior experience teaching theatre, performance studies and film.

His courses are informed on issues of cultural marginalization and misrepresentation in the arts, specifically of racial and ethnic minorities, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. His work has been published in peer-reviewed academic journals, including the International Review of Qualitative Research and Puppetry International, and presented at national conferences, including the Mid-America Theatre Conference, the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry, and the Mid-Atlantic Popular and American Culture Association (MAPACA). He currently serves as president of MAPACA. His most recent directorial offering was Robert Patrick’s Play-by-Play: A Spectacle of Ourselves: A Verse Farce in Two Acts. Thomas also has a background in acting. Some of his favorite roles played include Christopher in Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, Albert in Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park, and most recently the role of Actor in Nassim Soleimanpour’s White Rabbit; Red Rabbit.

Assistant Professor of Economics Darshana Udayanganie

Assistant Professor of Economics Darshana Udayanganie
Assistant Professor of Economics Darshana Udayanganie

Darshana Udayanganie earned her Ph.D., with specializations in environmental economics and college teaching, and a master’s degree in economics from the University of New Hampshire. She also has a master’s degree in resource economics and policy from the University of Maine and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Before joining K in 2017 as a visiting assistant professor, she taught at Central Michigan University from 2014 to 2017, Merrimack College in 2013 and 2014, and the University of New Hampshire’s global student success program from 2011 to 2014.

Her current research focuses on urban economics and environmental economics. She also has published book chapters on economic growth in relation to military expenditure and international trade.

Assistant Professor of Japanese Brian White

Brian White will teach courses in Japanese language, literature and culture at K.  He specializes in contemporary (post-1945) Japanese popular culture and media studies.

He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, where he wrote a dissertation on 1960s Japanese sci-fi literature and film, asking specifically, “What can a genre do?” He will delve into that history when he teaches a course in the winter term this year on Japanese science fiction and media history.

White earned a bachelor’s degree in East Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Across his undergraduate and graduate careers, he has spent a total of two and a half years living in Japan, primarily in Tokyo, Yokohama and Kyoto. 

Assistant Professor of Chinese Yanshuo Zhang

Yanshuo Zhang’s research addresses multiethnic Chinese identities in literary and visual cultures produced in China and the U.S. Her research on multiethnic Chinese cultural productions helps diversify scholarly understanding of and teaching about modern Chinese national culture.

She was a lecturer in Stanford University’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) from 2018 through 2020, where she designed classes on cross-cultural explorations of diversity, particularly in Asia and the U.S. She also has been a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Catherine University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Visiting Assistant Professor Vijayan Sundararaj

Vijayan Sundararaj leads a biology course this term in ecology and conservation. He has prior education experience as a lecturer, teaching assistant and topic lecturer between Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Canada, and Texas A&M University-Kingsville. His teaching interests include evolutionary ecology concepts, animal behavior, foraging behavior, predator-prey interactions, conservation biology, wildlife ecology, waterfowl ecology, mammalogy, spatial ecology, and introductory geographic information systems.

Sundararaj received a bachelor’s degree with a specialty in zoology from Gujarat University in India before earning a master’s degree in ecology from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel; a geographic information systems applications specialist graduate certificate from Sir Sandford Fleming College in Canada and a doctorate in forest sciences and wildlife ecology from Lakehead University.

Visiting Assistant Professor Eunice Uhm

Eunice Uhm specializes in modern and contemporary art, with a transnational focus on the United States and East Asia. Her work examines the conditions of migration and the diasporic aesthetic subjectivities in the works of contemporary Japanese and South Korean art from the 1960s to the present. She has previously taught courses on modern and contemporary art, East Asian art, and Asian American studies at Ohio State University. She has organized panels and presented her work on Asian American art at national conferences such as CAA. She is an active member of numerous grassroots community organizations for Asian Americans and immigrant rights, and she is involved in immigrant rights campaigns such as Love has no borders: A call for justice in our immigration system. Her essay, “Constructing Asian American Political and Aesthetic Subjectivities: Contradictions in the Works of Ruth Asawa,” is forthcoming (Verge: Studies in Global Asias, University of Minnesota Press).

Uhm received a master’s degree and a doctorate in the history of art from the Ohio State University. At K, she teaches courses on Asian and Asian American art, art and race, and transnationalism.

Visiting Assistant Professor Fungisai Musoni

Fungisai Musoni has joined the history department where she will teach courses in African civilizations, decolonization in West and Southern Africa, and U.S.-Africa relations since World War II.

Musoni has prior teaching experience in African literature, American politics and global issues, and social studies between the Ohio State University, Georgia State University, Gwinnett County Schools in Atlanta and the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education and Culture.

She fluently reads, writes and speaks the African languages of Shona and Manyika. Her education includes a bachelor’s degree in economic history and Shona from the University of Zimbabwe, Harare; master’s degrees in political science and history from Georgia State University and Mercer University respectively; and a doctorate in African American and African Studies from the Ohio State University.

Visiting Assistant Professor Badru-Deen Barry

Badru-Deen Barry teaches Introductory chemistry and biochemistry at K this fall.

His education includes a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Fourah Bay College in Freetown, Sierra Leone, master’s degrees in chemistry from Northeast Normal University in China and Michigan State University, and a doctorate in chemistry from Michigan State.

He previously served Michigan State and Northeast Normal as a graduate research assistant, Société Générale de Surveillance in Freetown, Sierra Leone, as port supervisor and chemist, and Fourah Bay College as a laboratory and teaching assistant.

Visiting Assistant Professor Mikela Zhezha-Thaumanavar

Mikela Zhezha-Thaumanavar is teaching courses in Spanish this fall as well as a course in foreign language teaching methods. In addition, she serves as the coordinator for the Spanish Teaching Assistants at K. She received her bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and doctorate in Spanish linguistics from Western Michigan University.

She has previously taught courses in Spanish at Western Michigan University, Davenport University, and Kalamazoo Community College. She also served WMU as a guest professor, teaching in the institution’s Summer Translation Program. She previously has worked in translation and speaks Albanian and Italian in addition to English and Spanish.

Visiting Assistant Professor Jennifer Mills

Jennifer Mills is leading courses including seminars in psychology and health psychology this term. Mills holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia, master’s degrees from Georgia College and State University and Western Michigan University, and a doctorate from WMU.

She is working on an executive master’s in public health at Emory University with an emphasis in prevention science. For the past 10 years, Mills has owned and operated MindBodyWell, a private counseling practice that focuses on science-based approaches to stress, depression and anxiety. 

Mills is an active member of the Institute for Public Scholarship, a local, anti-racist organization that works on issues of place and belonging. Her research interests focus on preventing and mitigating the impact of early childhood adversity on health. 

Visiting Assistant Professor Robert Mowry

Robert Mowry is teaching two sections of Introduction to Society and Culture offered by the Department of Anthropology and Sociology. His additional teaching interests include quantitative methods, disaster, the intersection of politics and the environment, and ways of seeing and knowing.

Mowry comes to Kalamazoo College from the University of Notre Dame, where he recently earned his Ph.D. in sociology. Previously, he earned master’s degrees from the University of Notre Dame and the University of Sheffield, and a B.A. from Earlham College.

As a teacher-scholar of disaster and politics, Mowry employs multiple methods to study the processes and outcomes of globally diverse, high-stakes political arenas—from post-disaster contentious politics in the U.S. and Japan to the gendered dynamics of protest participation in Europe. A related stream of research looks at how cultural processes of learning, memory, and thinking spur spontaneous laughter outbursts during Supreme Court oral arguments. His work has been published in Sociological Theory.

Visiting Assistant Professor Jennifer Perry

Jennifer Perry leads courses at K including General Psychology, Sensation and Perception, and Psychopharmacology in the Department of Psychology. Her credentials include a Bachelor of Arts from St. Olaf College and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Perry’s research includes studies on the ethics of laboratory animal research and the role of impulsive behavior in drug abuse.