students

“Wherefore art thou …?”

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Jenna Wood, Madison Donoho and Benvolio rehearsing
The clash of love and the world manifests in passion and violence in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. One fight scene beguiles (l-r) Tybalt (Jenna Wood ’16), Mercutio (Madison Donoho ’17), and Benvolio (Emma Franzel ’17). Costumes by Elaine Kauffman. Photo by Lanford Potts

Things are not always what they seem–and names (“What’s in a name?”) do not fully define identity. Festival Playhouse of Kalamazoo College opens its 51st season with a classic, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and with more, or less, historical accuracy than some would expect.

Originally, Shakespeare’s plays were performed exclusively by male actors playing both male and female roles. “Shakespeare’s male actors were not trying to lampoon women or comment on them. Rather, those actors were trying to behave truthfully in imaginary circumstances–they just happened to be playing women,” explains Todd Espeland, guest director.

Today, there are almost always more female actresses than male actors, so Espeland has decided to reverse the genders of the actors. Juliet is being played by a young man–as would have been the case in Elizabethan times–but Romeo will be played by a young woman. The experiment will deepen the experience of the play, Shakespeare’s first foray into the genre of tragedy.

“One of my jobs as a director in educational theatre is to provide the best experiences possible to grow and educate my students as well as our audiences,” says Espeland. “What we hope to do is look at the various ways power is a function of gender.”

“Now that I’m suddenly in many extremely powerless positions as Juliet, I’ve had to change my physicality,” says Thaddeus Buttrey ’17. “This is an extremely challenging role that puts me far out of my comfort zone, but it will make me a better performer, a better thinker.”

In the play, unclear thinking and rash decisions result in a variety of clashes, including sword fights. “I have learned a lot about how gender roles can sometimes influence action and the language that we use,” says Lindsay Worthington’17. “This has made me reflect on its role in my life outside the theatre.”

Because of its notoriety, the play challenges designers as well. “As a scenic and lighting designer, it has been fun to work on one of the most well-known plays in the English language and still make it original,” says Katelyn Anderson ’15. Others on the design team include Elaine Kauffman (costumes) and Arik Mendelevitz ’15 (sound). The fight scenes were choreographed by Jon Reeves.

The show opens on Thursday, November 6 at 7:30 p.m. and runs Friday and Saturday, November 7-8 at 8 p.m. The show’s final performance is Sunday, November 9, at 2 p.m. For ticket reservations, please call 269.337.7333. Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors and $15 for other adults; they may also be purchased at the door. For more information about the 51st season at Festival Playhouse, call 269.337.7333 or visit online.

Vitamin K Part of Liberal Arts Power

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Collage advertising the Council of Independent CollegesThe Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) recently launched its public website, Power of Liberal Arts. It is the most recent initiative of CIC’s public information campaign, Securing America’s Future: The Power of Liberal Arts Education. It complements the @SmartColleges Twitter Feed (which has more than 2,600 followers) as well as the SmartColleges Facebook page and LiberalArtsPower YouTube channel.

The new website, which includes the list of CIC member institutions, is aimed at high school students, their parents, and high school guidance counselors. The content corrects myths and misconceptions about the liberal arts and private colleges and universities and will help high school students and those who influence them to make more informed decisions about where they should apply and ultimately decide to attend college.

And the new website as a K presence. Two distinguished K grads — Steven Yeun and Julie Mehretu — describe in their own works the power of the liberal arts experience at K.

With/Out ¿Borders? Opens Thursday

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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.

Common Devisers

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Sonia Camereno-Morales and Cheyenne Harvey
Exploring art in Varanasi, India. Ankita (not pictured) takes a photo of Anuska (foreground) experimenting with content, perspective, and background as she creates photos of her friends Sonia Camereno-Morales ’15 (left) and Cheyenne Harvey ’15.

Senior Cheyenne Harvey is one of eight students in the United States selected as a Joy of Giving Something (JGS) Fellow by the organization Imagining America. As a JGS Fellow, Cheyenne receives a tuition scholarship and joins a national working group of engaged media makers. She will join the other Fellows in October at Imagining America’s national conference in Atlanta. Criteria for the Fellowship included financial need, artistic merit, and community engaged practice. Imagining America is a national network of campus-community collaborators in humanities, arts, and design hosted on the campus of Syracuse University. Joy of Giving Something is a scholarship provided through Imagining America dedicated to the photographic and media arts.

Cheyenne included three of the seven documentaries that she has produced as a K student in her application. Those three are titled Bronson Park Site Intervention; Finding Peace in a Burning World; and Social Landing. An art major at K, Cheyenne has worked in various media. Her primary interests are photography and, more recently, film making. One of her strongest influences (both personal as well as artistic) has been videographer and teacher Dhera Strauss, who works in the College’s information services and art departments.

Cheyenne is very active in the College’s Center for Civic Engagement. As a sophomore and a senior she has worked as a Civic Engagement Scholar for the program Partners in Art. In that position, she works with groups and organizations in Kalamazoo to build relationships through conversation and artistic expression. The groups with which she has worked include Community Advocates for Parents and Students, Ministry with Community, the Bureau of Services for Blind Persons, the Southwest Michigan Heritage Society, and the Boys and Girls Club of Kalamazoo. In her work, the making of art becomes a language shared by people who differ from each other. The impulse to create, common to all, is a way to experience the diversity of all, which is a great source of vitality. This sharing across difference can inspire more making of art–a deepening of a conversation with ourselves and the world.

Cheyenne wrote about this phenomenon in her application essay when she described her study abroad experience in Varanasi, India. “Many local children and teens would ask foreigners to take their picture or a video of them, and then they would run up and want to see the images,” wrote Cheyenne. But they were much more than subjects. “They were directors, devisers, and artists. They were not often content with the images, and many of the kids would plead with us to take the picture again in a new way. I could see that it meant a lot to them to have their own artistic agency in the process.

“Two of the local students would visit me often, and we became good friends through taking photos together. Sharing my phone and camera, we would take turns showing each other the images we carefully devised. One, named Anuska, who was four years old, would stand with her legs spread out holding my phone straight out in front of her to take photographs. Watching Anuska and the other kids further inspired me in the pursuance of photography and film. They showed me the power that media has to unlock the artist in everyone, and I love being a part of this. We differ as devisers of art, but share the impulse to make it.”

Add a camera phone (or paintbrush, or clay, or pen and ink) to that impulse and a native speaker of Hindi can communicate–and become a fellow artist and friend–with a native speaker of English.

Arcus Center Building Dedication is Open to the Public, Friday Sept. 19, 4:00 p.m.

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Aerial depiction of the Arcus Center for Social Justice LeadershipKalamazoo College hosts a dedication and ribbon-cutting ceremony at 4 P.M., Friday Sept. 19, for the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership building at 205 Monroe St., at the corner of Academy St. in Kalamazoo, Mich. The 10,000 sq. ft. structure—the newest on the K campus—was constructed by Miller-Davis Company of Kalamazoo and designed by Studio Gang Architects of Chicago.

The dedication event is free and open to the public. Guests are encouraged to park in the K Athletics Fields parking lot, 1600 W. Michigan Ave., and take continuously operating shuttle vans to the ceremony.

Speakers will include Charlotte Hall ’66, chair, K board of trustees; Jon Stryker ’82, K trustee; Jeanne Gang, founder of Studio Gang Architects; Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, K president; and Cameron Goodall ’15, K student commission president.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony will include Carol Anderson, K professor of religion and chair of the Department of Religion; Lisa Brock, academic director of K’s Arcus Center; and Mia Henry, executive director of K’s Arcus Center.

Refreshments and an open house in the new building follow.

Artist's rendering of the Arcus Center for Social Justice LeadershipThe Arcus Center building features offices, work areas, and classroom/seminar spaces situated around a central hearth and kitchen area. Wooden benches around the central fireplace preserve and repurpose wood from the site’s trees. The building’s structural frame includes 680 pieces of steel—many curved, some in two planes, and no two alike.

The building’s three-sided form emphasizes academic learning, relationships with the natural world, and interdependency of communities. A predominance of curvature represents arms open to all to join in social justice work.

The exterior cordwood masonry construction—northern Michigan white cedar logs of varying diameter in 11- to 36-inch lengths—symbolizes the diversity of humanity. While cordwood construction is traditional to the upper Midwest, this is believed to be the first commercial or institutional structure in North America to employ this technique.

Arcus Center for Social Justice LeadershipThe College will seek Gold LEED certification for the new building. Its geothermal heating and cooling system (12 wells drilled to a depth of 400 feet) meets the College’s stringent energy efficiency standard. A radiant and forced convection heating system transforms the Center’s entire floor into a heat duct, with air movement undetectable to the senses. Onsite drainage and retention reduces storm water runoff.

K gratefully acknowledges Steelcase Inc. and Custer Workplace Interiors for their generosity in helping supply office furnishings for the new Arcus Center building.

The Arcus Center building and its $5 million construction cost is a gift to the College from Jon Stryker, a member of the K board of trustees and of the K class of 1982. Jon is founder and president of the Arcus Foundation (www.arcusfoundation.org), a private, global grant-making organization with offices in New York City, Kalamazoo, and Cambridge, U.K., that supports the advancement of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights, and conservation of the world’s great apes. Jon is a founding board member of the Ol Pejeta Wildlife Conservancy in Northern Kenya, Save the Chimps in Ft. Pierce, Fla., and Greenleaf Trust, a trust bank in Kalamazoo. He also serves on the board of the Friends of the Highline in New York City. Jon is a registered architect in the State of Michigan. He earned a B.A. degree in biology from K and a M.A. degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley.

MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang is the founder of Studio Gang Architects, a Chicago-based collective of architects, designers, and thinkers practicing internationally. Jeanne uses architecture as a medium of active response to contemporary issues and their impact on human experience. Each of her projects resonates with its specific site and culture while addressing larger global themes such as urbanization, climate, and sustainability. With this approach, Studio Gang has produced some of today’s most innovative and visually compelling architecture. The firm’s projects range from tall buildings like the Aqua Tower, whose façade encourages building community in the vertical dimension, to the Nature Boardwalk at Lincoln Park Zoo, where 14 acres of biodiverse habitat are designed to double as storm water infrastructure and engaging public space.

Founded in 1909, Miller-Davis Company is headquartered in Kalamazoo, Mich., with an additional office in South Bend, Ind. It is a full-service construction company providing general contracting, construction management, design-build, and construction consulting services. Miller-Davis has served as the construction manager on numerous Kalamazoo College projects for more than 80 years. In addition to the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership, these projects include Upjohn Library Commons, Hicks Student Center, the K Natatorium, Stetson Chapel, Mandelle Administration Building, Hoben Residence Hall, and Trowbridge Residence Hall.

The mission of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership (www.kzoo.edu/socialjustice) is to support the pursuit of human rights and social justice by developing emerging leaders and sustaining existing leaders in the field of human rights and social justice, creating a pivotal role for liberal arts education in engendering amore just world. The Arcus Center was established at Kalamazoo College in 2009 through generous funding from the Arcus Foundation. In 2012, the College received a $23 million grant from the Foundation to endow the Center’s activities.

Kalamazoo College (www.kzoo.edu), founded in Kalamazoo, Mich., in 1833, is a nationally recognized liberal arts and sciences college and the creator of the K-Plan that emphasizes rigorous scholarship, experiential learning, leadership development, and international and intercultural engagement. Kalamazoo College does more in four years so students can do more in a lifetime.

Small School; Big Experiments

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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)

Life Changer

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Lor VangLor “Sana” Vang ’14 received a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) to pursue advanced language study in China this past summer. She studied at Zhejiang University of Technology in Hang Zhou, China for ten weeks.

She is one of approximately 550 U.S. undergraduate and graduate students who received the scholarship this year. The CLS Program is part of a U.S. Department of State’s effort to expand dramatically the number of Americans studying and mastering critical foreign languages, specifically Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Indonesian, Japanese, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu. CLS Program participants are expected to continue their language study beyond the scholarship and apply their critical language skills in their future professional careers.

Before Sana departed for China, we asked her to participate in a Q&A on her K career and her upcoming CLS summer.

Your hometown? I am from St. Paul, Minnesota. I was born in Thailand and raised in the U.S. I am Hmong-American.

Major, Minor? I majored in East Asian studies with minors in Japanese and economics.

Where did you study abroad? I studied in China during my junior year 2012-13, spending six months in Beijing and three months in Harbin.

Did you complete an Integrative Cultural Project (ICRP) during study abroad? Yes. My ICRP focused on traditional music and I learned how to play a Pipa, a four-string plucked lute. I took Pipa lessons with a graduate student at the Conservatory of Music in Beijing. I attended a music workshop and concerts, and also interviewed music students to learn why they decided to learn traditional versus western instruments.

How did your K study abroad experience affect your life? My K study abroad experience affected my life in many ways. China was an eye-opening experience that allowed me to see things in a different perspective. I studied the history of Beijing, improved my Chinese, and learned about music. In Harbin, I saw the influences of Western cultures and studied about Chinese myths and fairy tales. I also took a course in business that led me to understand more about China’s economic developments and how people are affected by the policies that are being implemented. I traveled and saw many historic sites, and got engaged in the community. I have many good friends from study abroad who will be with me throughout my life.

Describe your Senior Individualized Project? My SIP focused on the clashes of American culture and Hmong culture. Hmong are a diaspora group of people, and Hmong-Americans especially find it’s hard to keep the balance between being both Hmong and American. My SIP talked about finding a new identity of bi-culturalism, some of the struggles within our modern society, and understanding how history has become a big part of who Hmong are today.

Have you been involved in K student organizations? I served as the president of the Badminton Club in my sophomore year and was vice-president my senior year. I also was a member of the Asian Pacific-Islander Student Association.

Campus jobs? I worked for political science department and at the New Media Center.

What do you expect to experience and learn during your CLS summer in China? I want to learn more about the food culture and how to make authentic Chinese food. I also am interested in seeing the differences between living in the south of China and the north. I also expect to improve my Chinese language and learn more about the dialects.

What strengths and learning experiences from your nearly four years at K will help you during your CLS summer? I think my study abroad experience during my junior year will definitely help me during the CLS Summer. Studying abroad helped me become more independent, as well as understand more about myself, and the adaptation process that we all experience while moving to a different place. I learned that exploring cities and having conversations with others can also be beneficial in that you can get to know a place, the people, and become part of that ecosystem.

What are some of your longer-term academic and career goals beyond this summer? Beyond this summer I hope to either find a job or continue my studies in graduate school studying international relations and business. Critical Language Scholars are encouraged to study our targeted language and incorporate it into our future career. I hope to become fluent in Chinese and work in U.S.-China related jobs. Some activities that I might be engaged in are international relations related jobs and programs.

What would you like people to know about you and your K experience as you head toward Commencement and into the ranks of K alumni? Kalamazoo College’s slogan—More in Four. More in a Lifetime.—is, I believe, my Kalamazoo experience. I have met many inspiring people, become great friends with other K students, and have had an amazing four years that I will not forget. K is indeed life changing.

 

Convocation 2014

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With this ceremony we formally welcome the matriculating class into the Kalamazoo College community. President Eileen B. Wilson-Oyelaran, Provost Michael McDonald, Dean of Students Sarah Westfall, Chaplain Elizabeth Candido, faculty, staff, and peer leaders welcome new students and their families. Brad O’Neill ’93, chief executive officer and co-founder of TechValidate Software (Berkeley, California), will deliver the keynote address. Convocation concludes with all new students signing the Matriculation Book. In case of rain, families may watch convocation in the Dalton Theatre.

Fish Tales: This Hornet Has Some Genuine Whoppers

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Tucker Rigney with a teammate at a bass fishing competition
Tucker Rigney (right) at a bass fishing competition

Ask any college graduate and they will tell you their time in school was the basis for countless tales of fun, adventure and, yes, late night study sessions.

Tucker Rigney ’17 is busy crafting some stories of his own – fish stories, to be exact. But he can back up his bluster with results, and in the process, is giving Kalamazoo College a good name in the world of competitive college fishing.

A rising sophomore at K, Tucker recently finished in third place in the Michigan College Bass Circuit (MCBC), a summer-long series of bass fishing contests between small colleges and large universities in Michigan at lakes throughout the state. He and his fishing partner Cameron Hasen, a Kellogg Community College student, finished third in the MCBC’s two-day, season-ending tournament.

Earlier in the season, the pair took first place in the individual boat competition at a tournament in Haslett. The pair barely eked out the top spot, besting a duo from Ferris State University by about a third of a pound. Seven Michigan schools participated in the event, where a team’s total haul was weighed to determine a winner.

Tucker grew up an outdoorsman, he says, raised in a rural home near Gobles, about 25 miles northwest of Kalamazoo. His father taught him and his brother to fish on a small lake about 15 minutes from their house. The siblings would also bike down to their grandparents’ home and fish for bluegills in a nearby creek.

His largest bass? A not-too-shabby 22-inch, five-pound largemouth.

“It can be how I get away from things and just relax, or a challenge where I am trying to get on some big fish and win a tournament,” he says of fishing. “It’s what I want it to be. It has been a blast, fishing in these tournaments is such a rush.”

He got involved in the collegiate competition after his dad walked past a MCBC booth at an outdoor show in Grand Rapids. Rigney jumped at the opportunity to get involved, he says. The avid hunter and former Hornet baseball player also hopes to organize a fishing club on campus.

He thinks the club will take off, but stresses that competitive fishing is not your lazy, drop-a-line-and-hope-for-the-best kind of day out.

“I know students at K that fish, but I do not know of anyone that fishes competitively. There is a big difference between the two,” he says.

That’s true. Rigney knows the fickleness of fishing. At an earlier tournament at Hardy Dam Pond, near Newaygo, he and Cameron took seventh place out of 18 teams, only weighing three fish.

“We were ‘slaying’ them the days before. So that was a little disappointing,” he says.

Rigney says he’s hunted and fished in several states and Canada, hauling in his largest ever fish (he thinks it was a halibut) on a family vacation in Alaska.

Maybe it’s no surprise that the passionate outdoorsman plans to study biology at K.

“Biology is challenging, but it is also very interesting to me,” he says. “I guess that interest, in a way, comes from my love for the outdoors.”

Summer internship experiences “simply amazing” for this Kalamazoo College student

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Skylar Young and Fabri-Kal Marketing Manager Emily Ewing
Skylar Young ’15 with Fabri-Kal Marketing Manager Emily Ewing in Washington, D.C.

Skylar Young ’15 is a policy intern working a summer internship in Washington, D.C. with Chris Adamo ’99, staff director for the United States Senate Committee on Agriculture, Forestry & Nutrition. Skylar’s internship was arranged through K’s Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD). She recently sent this report to CCPD Director Joan Hawxhurst:

“I just wanted to send you and the rest of the CCPD department a thank you. Today, I had the amazing opportunity to hear Justice Elana Kagan speak to a select number of interns and then had lunch with Senator Debbie Stabenow in the Senate Dining Room.

“On the second day of my internship, the Senate Agriculture Committee held a hearing entitled “Grow it Here, Make it Here: Creating Jobs through Bio-Based Manufacturing.” The exhibition after the hearing demonstrated how bio-based products revitalize American manufacturing, and how it creates jobs for the economy.

“Chairwoman Sen. Debbie Stabenow from Michigan recognizes the integral connection between agriculture and manufacturing. Moreover, the Energy Title in the 2014 Farm Bill expanded eligible end-products to include renewable chemicals sources from biomass feedstock in the Bio-refinery Assistance Program.

“While I was perusing the exhibition to see all of the companies, I came across Fabri-Kal, a Kalamazoo-based company! I immediately went up to the spokeswoman and told her I went to Kalamazoo College.

“Here I was interning at the Senate on Capitol Hill, for not even a week, and I cannot seem to escape Kalamazoo!

“It made me feel proud to see a business from the city being represented, especially since it was representing one of the thirty innovators across the country that was leading in bio-based manufacturing. Fabri-Kal is a foodservice packaging supplier that manufactures packaging using 100% bio-based content from plant material. The company earned the USDA Certified Bio-based Product Label.”

“These experiences are simply amazing, and I would not be here without the Kalamazoo College Center for Career and Professional Development.”