research

The Algorithm Knows

Posted on

Kalamazoo College alumnus Justin HorowitzJustin Horowitz ’05 is a graduate research assistant in bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He’s also the first author of a study that describes the development a of mathematical algorithm that can ascertain intention even when the act of carrying out that intention is interrupted.

The study article is titled “I Meant to Do That: Determining the Intentions of Action in the Face of Disturbances,” and it appears in the online journal PLOS ONE. The article’s co-author is James Patton, professor of bioengineering and principal investigator of the study, which occurred at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and was supported by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

Horowitz and Patton call the discovery a “psychic robot” and its potential applications may turn out to be profound. Imagine a car diverted from its course that could restore the driver’s intended direction faster than the driver could do so. ““The computer has extra sensors and processes information so much faster than I can react,” Horowitz said in a UIC press release (October 6, 2015, by Jeanne Galatzer-Levy). “If the car can tell where I mean to go, it can drive itself there. But it has to know which movements of the wheel represent my intention, and which are responses to an environment that’s already changed.” The algorithm can make that distinction.

The algorithm also may have potential application in treatment of stroke patients. Imagine a prosthetic device that can restore a patient’s intended course of action before that intent was changed by after-effects of the stroke, such as interruptions in motor coordination. “If you know how someone is moving and what the disturbance is, you can tell the underlying intent,” said Horowitz, “which means we could use this algorithm to design machines that could correct the course of a swerving car or help a stroke patient with spasticity.”

Horowitz earned his bachelor’s degree at K in biology.

K’s 3 of 300

Posted on
Rina Fujiwara
Rina Fujiwara

Three Kalamazoo College chemistry majors presented at the 2015 Experimental Biology meeting, a joint meeting of six different societies including the American Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) as well as societies for physiology, nutrition, pharmacology, pathology, and anatomy. More than 15,000 scientists attended the meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

Rina Fujiwara ’15, Sarah Glass ’17, and Victoria Osorio ’16 shared results of the research they did in collaboration with Professor of Chemistry Laura Furge. Their presentations were part of both the Undergraduate Poster Competition and as part of the regular scientific session for ASBMB. Some 300 undergraduate posters composed the ASBMB competition from students across the country and from a variety of college and universities.

Fujiwara’s work, part of her Senior Individualized Project (SIP), showed how the work of two human liver enzymes vital to the body’s processing of medicines is halted by two small molecule inhibitors. The research took place in the Furge lab at Kalamazoo College and was published in Drug Metabolism and Disposition (Fall 2014). Other co-authors included Furge, Amanda Bolles ’14, and Erran Briggs ’14.

Victoria Osorio
Victoria Osorio

Glass and Osorio presented a poster that centered on recent work in the Furge lab with variants of an enzyme responsible for metabolism (or processing in the body) of about 15 percent of all medicines. The presence of these enzyme variants in different individuals can lead to vastly different responses to some pharmaceutical drugs, including cough syrup, the breast cancer drug tamoxifen, and many more. Though not present at the meeting, Mike Glista ’06) and Parker de Waal ’13) were co-authors on the posters.

This summer Fujiwara will enter the University of Pennsylvania Graduate Program in Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Osorio and Glass will continue research with Furge this summer. Both plan to attend graduate school after graduating from Kalamazoo College.

Sarah Glass
Sarah Glass

At the Boston meeting Professor of Chemistry Regina Stevens-Truss once again directed her highly acclaimed HOPES project, connecting science teachers with practicing scientists to enhance the quality and hands-on authenticity of primary and secondary classroom science instruction.

Professors Furge and Stevens-Truss are members of the ASBMB and attend the meeting every year. Travel to ASBMB for students Fujiwara, Glass, and Osorio was supported by grants from the Richard J. Cook Research Fellowship Fund (Fujiwara), an award from the ASBMB Student Affiliate (Fujiwara), the Provost Office (Glass, Osorio), and a grant to Furge through the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Travel for Furge and Truss was supported by the Hutchcroft Endowment as well as NIH and grants from ASBMB.

Prayer Provenance

Posted on

Sarah Guzy“God, grant me the serenity …”

It’s been spoken by millions seeking inspiration and solace, just twenty-six words that form the backbone of many 12-step programs, including Alcoholics Anonymous. It was chosen by World Almanac as one of the “10 Most Memorable American Quotes” of the 20th Century:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

So when Fred Shapiro, a law librarian at Yale University, called into question the authorship of the Serenity Prayer it caused a bit of a stir. Sarah Guzy ’10 found herself playing an important role in Shapiro’s quest to find who actually wrote one of the world’s most recognizable prayers.

In 2008, Shapiro published a story in Yale’s alumni magazine. He argued that Reinhold Niebuhr, a towering American theologian who is widely credited with authoring the prayer, may not actually have written it. Shapiro cited newspaper articles and a book in which versions of the prayer (written by women) were seen as far back as 1936. Niebuhr’s daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, had written a book in 2003 in which she said her father was the original author of the prayer, first using it in 1943.

In the years that followed his article Shapiro spent more time investigating the prayer’s origin. That’s where Guzy, a graduate student studying religion at Harvard University’s Divinity School and staffer at the school’s famous Schlesinger Library, entered the exploration. Shapiro needed someone to look through the diaries of Winnifred Crane Wygal, who knew Niebuhr and had a version of the prayer attributed to her in a 1933 Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper article.

“I wasn’t sure what was going to happen,” Guzy says, adding she spent 20 hours going through the diaries. “I was worried there would be nothing to shed light on the prayer’s provenance, but there was something. In fact the diaries were the key to answering the question. The toughest part? Trying to read Wygal’s handwriting.”

Shapiro wrote of Guzy’s findings: “Schlesinger’s staffer, Sarah Guzy, struck gold when she read Wygal’s diary entry for Oct. 31, 1932. Wygal wrote there: ‘R.N. says that ‘moral will plus imagination are the two elements of which faith is compounded. The victorious man in the day of crisis is the man who has the serenity to accept what he cannot help and the courage to change what must be altered.’”

Although not a mirror image of the prayer we know today, the basic elements were there, according to Shapiro. Niebuhr was the author after all, he wrote.

“I was really surprised about the buzz,” Guzy says. “Being in divinity school, it’s nice of him to mention me. I wasn’t expecting that.”

Shapiro recanted his doubts about Niebuhr in a story that spread widely, winding up in the Washington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Huffington Post, among others. Guzy’s efforts were cited in each of those stories.

And what of Sarah Guzy’s “provenance,” so to speak. If it wasn’t for one of her K professors, Guzy might never have been asked to go through those diaries.

An art history and religion double major at the College, Guzy’s academic trajectory was altered profoundly when she began taking classes with Assistant Professor of Religion Shreena Gandhi.

“She brought interesting frameworks of racial and gender issues to class. It was the first time I had really encountered them,” Guzy says. “It was so exciting, so different than other religion classes. I really connected with her. I never intended to study religion, but I loved the classes. K encourages that exploration.”

Guzy studied abroad in Bonn, Germany, and after graduation spent a year in Costa Rica, working in international education, an endeavor helped along by her work at the College’s Center for International Programs. When she returned home, she wondered what she should do next. Gandhi offered some advice.

“I said, ‘Why not look at Harvard?’” says Gandhi, who earned her master’s degree in religion there. “Sarah had the interest and the intellect. Her experience and her writing and ideas are what got her in.”

Guzy’s time in the Schlesinger Library has been nothing short of inspiring, she says. The library, home of the nation’s largest collection of documents and materials detailing women’s lives and contributions to American society, is a treasure trove of letters, telegrams, diaries, books, objects and plenty of interesting people.

In her time there, she has unpacked Julia Child’s silver soup ladle and soup tureen from Tiffany, scanned letters from Sigmund Freud, ate birthday cake with Judy Chicago, chatted-up Gayle Rubin, and read from the original papers of Adrienne Rich, a poet she first encountered at K. She even received a scan order for a telegram written by a K professor in the 1970s, she says.

Guzy applied to K “because the college had a funny name,” she says, and was included in the book: “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges.”

A native of Evanston, Ill., she came to K with her mom, almost on a whim. They just showed up–no campus tour scheduled, no professors or admissions officials lined up to talk with. A few K students approached the two and asked if they needed directions, then wound up taking them on a two-hour tour of the College, Guzy says.

That friendly openness impressed her immediately.

“There are similar schools that look the same on paper. But at K the feeling on campus was markedly different,” she says. “I was sold the minute I stepped on campus.”

That inclusive spirit extended to many of her other professors, she says.

“There was an encouragement to connect with your professors,” she says. “We would go to dinner;I would dog sit for them. I still maintain a lot of relationships. The environment there fosters the ability for making meaningful bonds because the professors care about the students, not just their research.”

She adds, “There’s a sense of the importance of the student. Faculty (at K) are so much more approachable than even those at Harvard, many of whom are focused on their personal brand. It’s not like that at K–it’s about relationships.”

There’s also another source of her admiration for the College: the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. While a student Guzy participated in the search for the center’s first executive director.

“I’m very proud of K. The (Arcus) center is an amazing thing,” she says. “It speaks to K’s commitment to giving voice to those not given voice in society generally and in institutions of higher education specifically.”

The College was also the place where Guzy was first broadly exposed to issues of inequality related to gender, socioeconomic status, race and sexuality, matters she learned about extensively in Gandhi’s classes. It’s no surprise, then, that Guzy’s academic research revolves around gender dynamics in colonialism, and how women exerted their influence in patriarchal societies, through witchcraft in Africa and Latin America, or voodoo in New Orleans.

“Sarah has always been an outspoken feminist, and outspoken on social justice issues broadly,” Gandhi says. “She’s interested in how things work. You start seeing inequity and oppression and begin to develop ideas on how to solve it. She always had that passion, and now it’s blossoming in her. I’m super proud of her.”

As for the future, Guzy says she has no plans to pursue additional academic endeavors after earning her master’s degree. She wants to get to work.

“There’s a huge trend in sending students abroad, but with not a lot of preparation and training to be culturally sensitive,” she says. “The more attuned to other cultures you are, the more the student gets out of the experience, and the more those in the host nation understand us as well.”

Text by Chris Killian. Photo courtesy of Sara Guzy.

Kalamazoo College Faculty Members Achieve Outside the Classroom

Posted on

Kalamazoo College faculty members not only teach, also advise students, and serve on numerous committees that help direct the College’s academic programs, they publish books, essays, scientific papers, and other writings, and they receive awards, grants, and countless other accolades. Below are recent achievements by just a few K faculty members. Well done, professors!

(By the way, K has a very low (13-1) student-to-faculty ratio. Of the nearly 100 full-time “resident” faculty, 96 percent hold a Ph.D. or equivalent terminal degree.

 

Bob Batsell, professor of psychology, received a 2014-2015 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant, from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee, for his project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Jeff Bartz, professor of chemistry, received a $220,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled “Photodissociation Dynamics Studied by Velocity-Mapping Ion Imaging.”

Lisa Brock, academic director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership and associate professor of history, co-edited a special issue of the Radical History Review on the global antiapartheid movement.

Henry Cohen, emeritus professor of romance languages and literature, published the article “The river, the levee, love and confession: The thematic of Grazia Deledda’s L’argine” in Forum Italicum.

Kiran Cunningham, professor of anthropology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee, for her project “An Assessment of Transformative Learning through Change-Oriented Research.”

John Dugas, professor of political science and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership associate, published two book chapters. “Old Wine in New Wineskins: Incorporating the ‘Ungoverned Spaces’ Concept into Plan Columbia,” appeared in U.S. National Security Concerns in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Concept of Ungoverned Spaces and Failed States. “Colombia” appeared in Politics of Latin America.

Peter Erdi, Luce professor of complex systems studies, co-authored Stochastic Chemical Kinetics, a book published by Springer.

Dennis Frost, Wen Chao Chen associate professor of East Asian social sciences, published “Sporting Disability: Official Representations of the Disabled Body at Tokyo’s 1964 Paralympics” in the Asia Pacific Journal of Sport and Social Science. He also received a 2014-15 scholarship of teaching and learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for his project “Acquiring the Gift of Gab: Demystifying Public Speaking.”

Laura Furge, Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney professor of chemistry, published two papers with student co-authors: “Mechanism-based Inactivation of Human Cytochrome p450 3A4 by Two Piperazine containing Compounds” appeared in Drug Metabolism and Disposition; “Molecular Dynamics of CYP2D6 Polymorphisms in the Absence and Presence of a Mechanism-based Inactivator Reveals Changes in Local Flexibility and Substrate Access Channels” appeared in PLoS One. Also, her article “Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education” was published in Social Ecology of the Classroom: Issues of Inclusivity. 

Adriana Garriga-Lopez, assistant professor of anthropology and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership associate, published “Azucar dura y melaza vaga” in the online journal 80grados.

Menelik Geremew is the new Stephen B. Monroe assistant professor of money and banking, a chair held by the faculty member within the Department of Economics and Business who teaches in the field of money and banking. Charles J. Monroe established this chair in 1966 in honor of his father, Stephen B. Monroe.

Christine Hahn, assistant professor of art and art history, has begun a three-year term on the College Art Association’s (CAA) Committee on Diversity Practices, one of CAA’s nine Professional Interests, Practices, and Standards Committees. Her committee supports the development of global perspectives on art and visual culture; promotes artistic, curatorial, scholarly, and institutional practices; and assesses and evaluates the development and implementation of curricular innovation, new research methods, curatorial and pedagogical strategies, and hiring practices that contribute to the realization of these goals. The Committee is committed to organizing conference sessions that address issues concerning race and ethnicity.

Autumn Hostetter, associate professor of psychology, had three articles published recently. “Gesture-speech integration in children with specific language impairment” appeared in the International Journal of Language and Communication Disorders; “Gesutre in Reasoning: An Embodied Perspective” appeared in The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition; and “Action Attenuates the Effect of Visibility on Gesture Rates” appeared in the journal Cognitive Science. She also received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Patrik Hultberg, associate professor of economics, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for his project “Assessing the Flipped Classroom.”

Andrew Koehler, associate professor of music and director of the Kalamazoo Philharmonic won the American Prize in Orchestral Programming – Community Division.

Maksim Kokushkin, assistant professor of sociology published “Standpoint Theory is Dead, Long Live Standpoint Theory! Why Standpoint Thinking Should Be Embraced by Scholars Who Do Not Identify as Feminists?” in the Journal of Arts and Humanities.

Amy Lane, visiting assistant professor of sociology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “An Assessment of Transformative Learning through Change-Oriented Research.”

Charlene Boyer Lewis, professor of history, was selected into the Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lectureship Program.

 

Sarah Lindley, associate professor of art, had an exhibition at the Lansing Art Gallery titled “Of Consequences: Industry & Surrounds.” She also received a Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) Expanding Collaboration Initiative titled “Surrounding Industry and Environs: An Intellectual Resource Collective.”

Amy MacMillan, L. Lee Stryker assistant professor of business management and her co-authors received the award for best conference refereed paper from the Marketing Management Association for their paper “Improving the Collaborative Online Student Evaluation Process.”

Simona Moti, assistant professor of German, had her essay “Between Political Engagement and Political Unconscious: Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Slavic East” published as a chapter in the edited volume of German Literature as World Literature.

Andy Mozina, professor of English, published Quality Snacks, a book of 15 short fiction stories.

Stacy Nowicki, Title IX coordinator and library director, was appointed by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to the Library of Michigan Board of Trustees.

Jennifer Perry, visiting assistant professor of psychology, received a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning grant from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Test Enhanced Learning in the Psychology Classroom.”

Taylor Petrey, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone assistant professor of religion, published his article “Semen Stains: Seminal Procreation and the Patrilineal Genealogy of Salvation in Tertullian” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies.

Di Seuss, writer in residence and assistant professor of English, received residency at Hedgebrook, a writing retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Wash. Her essay/prose poem was published in Brevity and several of her poems have been selected to be published in the Missouri Review. Her piece “Wal-Mart Parking Lot” received the “½ K Prize” from the Indiana Review and her piece “Free Beer” was selected to be included in Best American Poetry 2014. Di is now in a tenure track position at K.

Mike Sosulski, associate provost and chair and associate professor of German, won 2014’s Best Article Award from the journal Die Unterrichtspraxis/Teaching German with his article “From Broadway to Berlin: Transformative Learning through German Hip-Hop.”

Noriko Sugimori, assistant professor of Japanese, received a grant from the GLCA Expanding Collaboration Initiative for the project “Bringing East Asia to the Great Lakes Region: An Intergenerational Cross-Cultural Digital Oral History Project.”

Amanda Wollenberg, assistant professor of biology, was a recipient of a 2014-15 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Grant, from K’s Teaching and Learning Committee for her project “Assessment of Student Experiences in the Cell and Molecular Biology Lab.”.

Margaret Wiedenhoeft, associate director for the Center of International Programs, was selected as one of three co-editors of the forthcoming 4th Edition of NAFSA’s Guide to Education Abroad for Administrators and Advisors.

Michael Wollenberg, assistant Professor of biology, co-authored “Propioniobacterium-Produced Coproporphyrin III Induces Staphylococcus aureus Aggregation and Biofirm Formation.” a paper titled in mBio.

[Malllory Zink ’15, helped compile this list. Thanks, Mallory!]

Challenge and Imagination: Working Science at K

Posted on
Kalamazoo College alumnus Parker de Waal
Parker de Waal ’13

Parker de Waal ’13 had a wish: he wanted to work on a computational chemistry project.

Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry, had a challenge: she needed models of the variants of an important human enzyme. (Some background: The aforementioned enzyme, found in the liver, helps the body process medicines, but it’s not exactly the same–hence, variants–in all individuals. Such variability means some people react differently (including adversely) to important medicines. That’s a serious health problem, and part of Furge’s current grant from the National Institutes of Health calls for the study of these variants. And for such study a model of the variants’ structures would certainly be useful!)

In spring 2013, wish met challenge, and, one year later, the two researchers (along with co-author Kyle Sunden ’16) have published a paper in PLoS ONE, the online journal of the Public Library of Science.

That culminating publication traces back to a laboratory question: Could de Waal (a student in Furge’s “Advanced Biochemistry” class) make computational models of the variants? “I suggested some different ways to approach the problem,” says Furge, “and those approaches took Parker all of about two days!” It was at that point that de Waal suggested to Furge some different, more powerful computational approaches–specifically, molecular dynamics using more sophisticated software. “I said, ’Let’s go for it!’” says Furge. “And we both started on the journey to learn more about Molecular Dynamics approaches.”

The journey included consulting with other scientists around the country and the world (Germany, the Czech Republic) both by email and in person at various scientific conferences. Furge and de Waal used a supercomputer at the University of Texas for the computational work. Analysis of the resulting structures was completed by Furge and Sunden during the winter and spring terms of 2014. “The project is a beautiful example of how research and teaching go together at K,” says Furge. The work has been presented at two major medical meetings.

The paper includes 21 figures and tables. Parker de Waal performed all the experiments that led to the figures; Sunden did the experiments and analyses for two of the figures. Furge did the majority of the analysis. In true liberal arts fashion, the cross-disciplinary work combines computer science and biochemistry. Furge taught Sunden, a chemistry and computer science double major, the relevant biochemistry as they progressed with the project. Sunden hopes to continue the work for his Senior Individualized Project after he returns from study abroad in Australia. The work may one day contribute to personalized solutions for people who have adverse drug reactions to important medicines. The paper has had more than 300 views in the six weeks since it’s been published.

Great academics, cross-disciplinary collaboration, research at the edge, and science that matters! Science education at Kalamazoo College: a double helix of challenge and imagination.

Mara Richman ’14: Have Research, Will Travel

Posted on
Senior psychology major Mara Richman in front of a projection screen
Mara Richman ’14 presenting her research in Rome

Mara Richman ’14 recently cut classes for an entire week. But the senior psychology major wasn’t goofing off. Rather, she attended the International Borderline Personality and Allied Disorders annual conference in Rome—at their invitation—to deliver her research paper “Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test in Major Depression and Borderline Personality Disorder: A Meta-Analysis”

She was the conference’s youngest oral presenter.

“There were researchers from all over the world on this topic and I presented before a huge audience,” said Mara.

“I have a passion for meta-analysis and this is one of several that I have done on my own. This one looked at differences in mental state decoding between borderline personality disorder and major depressed patients.”

The National Institute of Mental Health defines borderline personality disorder (BPD) as a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. Most people with BPD suffer from problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior, and unstable relationships with other people.

Mara’s paper was based on independent research she conducted while on study abroad at Kalamazoo College’s Budapest Semester in Cognitive Science, under the mentorship of Zsolt Unoka, M.D., Ph.D. She visited with Dr. Unoka during the Rome conference.

One of her K professors, Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies Peter Erdi, Ph.D., helped her arrange the research project. Help with funding for her Rome trip came from K’s Office of the Provost, Department of Psychology, and Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership.

“The conference truly shaped me and it was great to network with people in the field to learn more about the BPD,” said Mara.

Mara completed her SIP this past summer at Harvard University where she moved forward her BPD research by studying identity disturbance. She currently has 12 peer-reviewed journal articles in review or awaiting publication. Previously, she received an award from the American Psychological Association for outstanding research.

“My K advisor, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Jennifer Perry, Ph.D., has been a huge help in guiding me and helping me make these decisions.”

Mara, who came to K from Tampa, Fla., completed all of her graduation requirements early and will leave campus at the end of this fall quarter. She hopes to land fulltime work in a clinical facility in order to gain more clinical experience before pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology with a focus on BPD.

K Professor and Students Publish Important Chemistry Research

Posted on
K students Rina Fujiwara, Erran Briggs and Amanda Bolles with Professor Laura Furge
Medicinal researchers and members of the Furge Lab (l-r): Rina Fujiwara, Erran Briggs, Amanda Bolles, and Laura Furge

Laura Furge, the Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Professor of Chemistry at Kalamazoo College, is the senior and corresponding author of an important scientific paper that includes three Kalamazoo College student co-authors: Amanda Bolles ’14, Rina Fujiwara ’15, and Erran Briggs ’14. The paper is titled “Mechanism-based Inactivation of Human Cytochrome P450 3A4 by Two Piperazine-containing Compounds” and appears in Drug Metabolism and Disposition, a highly regarded, high impact international journal published by the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. The research the paper describes, which was conducted in the Furge Lab on K’s campus, contributes the understanding of how some drugs “apply the brakes to” the activity of an enzyme–in this particular case, an enzyme important to the metabolism (or processing) of about half of all medicines! What are the human implications of the work? “Many individuals take multiple medicines each day,” said Furge. “Multiple-drug regimens can lead to unwanted side effects, including drug-induced inhibition of the very enzymes responsible for the metabolism and clearance of other co-administered drugs.” In fact, side effects from drug interactions of polypharmacy therapy are the number one cause of hospitalization in the U.S. “This paper adds in understanding of how certain classes of drugs may cause this type of unfavorable medical event,” said Furge. “New insights will hopefully lead to better prevention in the future.”

The paper includes 13 figures and tables. Furge noted that Bolles, Fujiwara, and Briggs performed all the experiments that lead to those figures, and “all the work was done on the campus at Kalamazoo College. We had all the equipment here needed to complete these studies, and we have already started full swing on another set of experiments for a future publication.” The students have presented parts of the preliminary data at national meetings in the past year, and the research forms of basis of the Senior Individualized Projects for Bolles and Fujiwara.

Such research, and the extraordinary educational opportunities it provides for K students, requires the cooperation, coordination, and collaboration of many funding sources. “This is so important,” Furge stressed. The Richard Cook Fellowship and the Alan and Elaine Hutchcroft Fund (endowments created and supported by alumni gifts) paid for the summer stipends of Fujiwara and Bolles, respectively. The mass spectrometer essential to the experiments was paid for in part by the Hutchcroft Fund and a grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The research also was funded by grants Furge secured from the National Institutes of Health.

“Drug Metabolism and Disposition is an international journal with a high impact factor,” added Furge. Impact factors measure how frequently manuscripts in a journal are referenced by other authors.

With/Out ¿Borders? Opens Thursday

Posted on

Two social justice advocates attend Without Borders ConferenceMore than 500 social justice advocates, scholars and leaders ranging from civil rights icons and eccentric artists to young organizers and poet laureates will be on the Kalamazoo College campus, as well as locations throughout the city, this weekend, Sept. 25-28 to participate in the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (ACSJL) “With/Out ¿Borders?” conference.

Attendees will engage in questioning–and openly attempt to complicate –the political, ideological, cultural, and social barriers that make up our world. Thought-provoking plenary sessions, participatory think tanks, and moving and entertaining artistic performances are just some of the diverse and engaging platforms that will be used to question the borders that surround so much of our world today–and develop paradigms and strategies to break them down.

Well-known performance artists and cultural workers Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Michèle Ceballos Michot, whom make up the performance troupe La Pocha Nostra, will be on stage on Friday afternoon with Adriana Garriga-López, the Arcus Social Justice Leadership Assistant Professor of Anthropology. The trio will discuss, instigate, and agitate on the meaning of border politics, performance, and the role of art in the process.

Later that day, the conference will take on a more poetic note, as two well-known poets read form their work and engage with local poet and activist Denise Miller and Lisa Brock, academic director of the ACSJL.

Nikki Finney, winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry, and Keorapetse “Willie” Kgositsile, former poet laureate of South Africa, will bear witness to history and exile and set the stage alive with “truth telling” and love poems crafted out of the struggles of black people from both the southern areas of the United States and South Africa.

Civil rights icon Angela Davis will take to the stage on Saturday morning, along with distinguished African American studies expert Robin D. G. Kelley, peace activists Lynn Pollack and Leenah Odeh and academics Alex Lubin and Saree Makdisi, to discuss the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) Movement emerging globally in support of the Palestinian people, who live in walled, or “bordered” territories.

Participants in this plenary session will ask if the BDS movement is the next critical solidarity movement of our time, who it’s for, who it’s against, and why.

Cities will take center stage later Saturday, when a plenary of scholars and organizers examine resistance movements in cities today. Organizer and writer Kali Akuno, Detroit-based activist shea howell and David Stovall, professor of African-American studies, will discuss teacher protests in Chicago, water rights issues in Detroit, city planning strategies in Jackson, Miss., and minimum-wage increase advocacy efforts nationwide at this plenary moderated by Rhonda Williams, associate professor of History at Case Western University.

The future of various social justice movements will be on display in the Hicks Center Banquet Room Sunday morning, where a host of young social justice advocates and organizers will discuss their own projects, talk about the need for more youth to become involved and analyze the New Youth Movement.

Civil rights organizers Phillip Agnew and Charlene Carruthers, undocumented immigrant advocate Lulu Martinez, climate change organizer Will Lawrence, sexual assault awareness organizer Zoe Ridolfi-Starr and voting rights advocate Sean Estelle will be in on the discussion, moderated by the Mia Henry, executive director of the ACSJL.

For a full list of events, go to the conference’s schedule page.

Small School; Big Experiments

Posted on

Professor of Chemistry Jeff Bartz in the laser labThis past spring Professor of Chemistry Jeff Bartz (pictured at left with two students in his laser laboratory) received word that the National Science Foundation would provide a three-year grant to Kalamazoo College so that Bartz’ lab could conduct new experiments to evaluate how the shape of a molecule influences the mechanics of its dissociation into smaller fragments. The work began this summer and involved four students: Mara Birndorf ’16, Jeremy Lantis ’16, Braeden Rodriguez ’16, and Marlon Gonzalez ’17. And there’s nothing quite as effective as complementing classroom work with hands-on real-world experience. “My chemistry classes taught me the fundamentals, but the research is giving me an idea of what a physical chemist does,” said Birndorf. Bartz agrees: one of the great benefits of the NSF grant is its effect on students, who “move from seeing themselves as students to seeing themselves as scientists.” On a typical weekday morning these young chemists are using lasers in the type of experiments that Bartz long ago thought were unlikely to ever be performed here. After all, smaller schools do face the challenges of getting their research swallowed up by larger institutions with more resources (not to mention graduate students) to conduct a project. Despite those challenges, Bartz finds an angle for K to contribute to new scientific work. “We have to evolve if we want to continue to work at the forefront.” Like most new science, what’s going on in Bartz’ lab derives from previous work. Niclas West ’12 presented a talk, “Velocity-mapped ion imaging of methyl nitrite photodissociation,” in 2010 at the 65th International Symposium on Molecular Spectroscopy. Researchers from Texas A&M found the abstract online and approached the K team about the similarities between the two teams’ experimental techniques. The two groups decided to collaborate on the publication of a paper, “A method for the determination of speed-dependent semi-classical vector correlations from sliced image anisotropies,” which included K student co-authors West and Kelly Usakoski ’14. After this paper came out in The Journal of Chemical Physics, Bartz began work on the proposal the NSF funded last spring. “We are looking at information gaps in previous work that our current experimental techniques can help fill,” Bartz said, “sort of testing old experiments in new ways. It’s kind of a K niche we’ve carved out.” (text by Colin Smith ’15)

Making Research Click

Posted on
Michael Finkler uses a pencil to point as Bel Da Silva looks on
Michael Finkler and Bel Da Silva study the embryonic development of snapping turtles.

Michael Finkler ’91, Ph.D., “pays forward” the kind of hands-on research opportunity he had at K (thanks to his mentor, Associate Provost Paul Sotherland, who was teaching biology when Finkler was a student). Finkler is a professor of biology at Indiana University Kokomo. This past summer he hosted in his lab Brazil native Bel Da Silva, an undergraduate student (Federal University of Amazonas) participating in an exchange program called Science Without Borders. She assisted in Finkler’s ongoing research of snapping turtle embryo development. IU-Kokomo posted a story about the collaboration in its online newsletter, and in the interview for that story, Finkler paid tribute to Sotherland: “’I had a really great mentor as I completed my undergraduate thesis, and that’s when research really clicked for me,” he said. “That’s why I’m a professor now, because of that mentoring. In Bel’s case, I also saw an opportunity to get experience working with an international student.’” Sotherland served as Finkler’s SIP advisor. In fact, their SIP work (a productive collaboration that included John Van Orman) eventually led to the 1998 publication of a paper titled “Experimental manipulation of egg quality in chickens: influence of albumen and yolk on the size and body composition of near-term embryos in a precocial bird” in the Journal of Comparative Physiology. Seems that the seed of a K experiential opportunity like the Senior Individualized Project grows across time and borders. After all, the IU-Kokomo article notes that Da Silva intends to become a professor and researcher, the kind of scientist and teacher who will provide hands-on research opportunities for students from Brazil and other countries.