Io Triumphe! Fall-Winter 2016-17

Io Triumphe!

THE MAGAZINE FOR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS OF ALBION COLLEGE

FALL-WINTER 2016-17

TWENTY FOR ’20

Britons break through with big dreams, bold ideas, and hard work

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 1 VOL. LXXXI, NO. 2

Contents

FALL-WINTER 2016-17

Features INTO THE JET STREAM Twenty for ’20: Hindsight will show these rising young Britons took flight with talent and drive.

Plus: Faculty members look ahead.

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CARVING OUT KNOWLEDGE A student and professor uncover the backstory of a mostly forgotten Native American artifact, and begin proceedings for repatriation.

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ALWAYS WITHIN HIS REACH Through mountains of fundraising and valleys of logistics, Doug Armstrong, ’88, completes a quest to open a special camp for kids.

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THE HOUSEMATES OF 1213 Today’s reimagined Munger Place inspires 10 alumni to share their own living-learning story, on East Erie Street in the fall of 1973.

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Departments BRITON BITS ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS

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ALBIONOTES 42

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BRITON BITS

Learning, and Living, Together I’ve regularly stated in my two and a half years here that Albion, Michigan, is a microcosm of America. And Albion College, according to our newly completed strategic plan, strives to be an exemplary private, residential liberal arts institution—in other words, a model for America.

The thing with big notions like these is that they also apply during challenging times. I believe most of you, if not all of you, would agree that our country’s conversation these last few months (before and after Election Day) has been rather difficult, even heated. Albion, Michigan, and, yes, Albion College, too, experienced some hard days and polarizing moments this fall. And while those moments can become teachable ones, when we are polarized it is difficult to nurture the living and learning environment that characterizes the most effective college communities.

Constructive conversations in challenging times build a greater understanding, and our students, faculty, and staff have been engaged in those conversations—one-on-one and in groups large and small—since the election. Of course, we will continue to talk next semester, as will campus communities nationwide.

Sometimes those words won’t come easily, but as dialogue progresses, our best selves tend to emerge.

In our community, we saw that on a midNovember late afternoon when at least 200

people, from a multitude of backgrounds, gathered downtown on very short notice in a unity-rally response to racist and anti-Semitic vandalism found on Superior Street earlier that morning. A few days later, another unity rally was held at the Rock. Our College’s Mission Statement describes diversity as a source of strength for all members of the community; on those days, our strength, and love, were plain to see.

We go through presidential elections just once in high school, and again just once in college. Young graduates are the ones who staff political campaigns, not to mention campaigns on every side of every issue. When 2020 rolls around, recent Albion graduates will be in a position to define the process and outcome in our elections and in their chosen life paths—just like Albion grads before them have done.

I hope you’ll take the time to get to know a little about the Britons (alumni and students) featured in this issue. Like all Britons, they were impacted by the ones before them— through recommendations, scholarships, and mentoring. They impact campus and their City while they are here—through year-round service, special events like The Big Read, and spur-of-the-moment bus trips (see above) with community members to Washington,

A weekend to remember: President Ditzler (back row, fourth from right) accompanied 16 students, several College and faculty staff members, and the NAACP’s Albion branch on a September 23-25 bus trip to Washington, D.C., for the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture.

D.C., for the opening of an important new national museum. And they will impact the Britons who follow them in ways many of them do not yet know but will come to cherish in the future.

While those links are indirect more often than not, they go to the heart of what learning, and ongoing conversation, is all about.

Mauri Ditzler President

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NEWS MAKERS

Ryan Kadro, ’99, is executive producer of CBS This Morning (weekdays, 7 a.m.

ET) in New York. The six-year veteran of CBS News was promoted to the role last April; prior to CBS, Kadro rose through the ranks at NBC’s Last Call with Carson Daly and began his career as an NBC page.

In late October, taking stock of the election: “I am enthusiastic about the opportunity to cover a different aspect of the political process. I think everybody is kind of ready to move forward one way or another, and see how we begin to pull a functional government together. It’s been a long campaign, that’s for sure.”

His best, must-see story of 2016: “Election aside, this has been a really difficult year for the newsroom. I think the story we’re most proud of is the opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. We did a series of stories leading up to it and how it came to be, and we also took our whole show there and did two hours with limited commercial interruption. … It was very moving, an editorial and technical triumph, and I’m really proud of that.”

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PODCASTING PROFS Two members of Albion’s faculty are using the growing power and scope of podcasts to highlight their work.

Craig Miller, ’77, is chief media/ communications officer for USA Basketball in Colorado Springs. Since joining the organization in 1990, he has served as Team USA’s primary press contact at the last seven Olympic Games.

A member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame’s Curt Gowdy Media Awards Committee, Miller was inducted into Albion’s Athletic Hall of Fame at Homecoming in October.

On his latest Olympic experience: “Obviously, Rio de Janeiro is a lot different economically than past Olympic sites like London or Beijing. You see beautiful sites in Rio, and you also see impoverished sites that are striking as well. … The Brazilians are much more festive; they certainly know how to throw a party. … At the very end, after the men’s team won the gold medal, Carmelo Anthony (the first four-time U.S. medalist in men’s basketball) and I got an opportunity to congratulate each other.

That was a special moment because we’ve known each other a lot of years.”

On representing his country abroad: “Being in charge of media relations, you’re interacting with the public constantly. You’re the face of the organization, and you always have to be cognizant of that. You have to remember that things are different in each country.

Generally they are proud of what they do and are doing the best with what they have. If you understand and acknowledge that, it makes a world of difference.”

Religious Studies professor Ron Mourad is hosting Ultimate Concerns (ultimateconcerns.org), a twicemonthly examination of various religions and their impact, while Carrie Booth Walling, associate professor of political science, is featured in a prominent offering focused on genocide studies.

Mourad (above left) started work on his podcast series over the summer as a sabbatical project. “I am proud of it and I’m working hard on it,” he says, adding that future episodes will explore Islam, religion in politics, and Hinduism and yoga. “There are a lot of academic podcasts that put a lot of work into making information accessible for a broader audience. But I think I’m getting better at it as I do more of them.”

Walling (above right) was interviewed in late September for a New Books Network genocide studies episode. “This is a podcast series for lifelong learners,” says Walling, whose 2013 book All Necessary Measures: The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention recently came out in paperback. “It’s about important things going on in the world. I thought it would be a neat approach to try to reach a wider audience.”

Find the podcast under Politics & Society at newbooksnetwork.com.

Investor Psyche: Beyond Bullish and Bearish Greed. Fear. Guilt.

Pride. In the high-stakes, hightension financial advising world that Pat Coyle, ’84 (left), has resided in for the past 30 years, these are the emotions that can rule. These are also the sentiments that can turn normally reasoned, and reasonable, people into emotional and physical wrecks.

“As great as it is to have created significant wealth, it can bring with it a great deal of unforeseen anxiety and stress,” says Coyle, who has served clients for Merrill Lynch in Chicago since 1987.

“Next to their doctor, this topic is one of the most personal things in people’s lives.”

Coyle isn’t just a wealth management advisor.

Because money and investing can dredge up so many feelings, he relies heavily on his firm’s research in the growing field of behavioral finance.

He has even brought a clinical psychologist with him to family meetings. “We want to educate people and help them avoid things that ruin outcomes,” he says. “How do you deal with the wealth in ways that reflect your values?”

Coyle uses empathy to help guide his investors, much like his dad did as a dentist with patients in Detroit. “His relationships with patients were very personal, and I was drawn to that,” he says, adding, “What matters most to [investors], to their families, is their legacy. Advising people about managing wealth without understanding who they are as people, and what matters most to them, is a big miss.” —Chuck Carlson

Body Books

Two newly published titles by Albion alumnae.

Body 2.0: Finding My Edge Through Loss and Mastectomy by Krista Hammerbacher Haapala, ’96 (She Writes Press)

Body Kindness: Transform Your Health from the Inside Out—and Never Say Diet Again by Rebecca Scritchfield, ’99 (Workman Publishing)

To honor her mother’s deathbed advice to head off breast cancer and “be there” for her boys, Haapala chose to trade healthy breasts for longevity and peace of mind. She acknowledged family history with the disease in a radio interview with Maine. The Magazine: “One thing Mom had said to me early on, when I saw her the last time, was that she felt like she had been waiting for her cancer. And I thought, ‘That’s something I don’t have to do. … I have a choice here.’”

“You can’t hate yourself healthy,” says the Washington, D.C.-based nutrition, fitness, and well-being expert, whose initial challenges as a brand-new mom set the book in motion. “I had to reframe what my life was going to look like.”

Incorporating psychology, biology, and chemistry, Scritchfield provides a structure for how to change habits within one’s life preferences. “When you don’t focus on your appearance, you instantly feel better and more motivated to do the things that likely will give you better health,” she says.

Haapala chronicles the personal research, medical process, bodily changes, and emotional toll involved in the more than two-year odyssey of what she refers to as her “Body 2.0 vision quest.” A book Library Journal calls “a little transcendentalist, a little bit rock and roll,” Body 2.0 follows the release of Haapala’s poetry collection, Unlearn Moderation, and, according to Buzzfeed, “captures the importance of taking charge of your own life.” kristahaapala.com

A Briton bonus: Look for the shout-out to Dave Egnatuck, ’71. “I took a gym class with him first semester, then took a class with him every semester. He had a lot of positivity in his message, and I’ve carried that with me.” bodykindnessbook.com

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BRITON BITS

Albion 24/7

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2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, columnist for The Washington Post, will deliver the keynote during the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. Convocation and Community Celebration, Jan. 30 at 7 p.m. at the Bohm Theatre.

Watch the event live at youtube.com/ albioncollege.

of the most popular beverage items ordered at StockwellMudd Libraries’ Read Between the Grinds Café are smoothies, macchiatos, and fair trade Numi tea.

30 Briton goals for the season quickly turned the brand-new Davis Athletic Complex into an exciting home-field edge for the men’s and women’s soccer teams.

Both posted winning records in conference play this fall. Indoors, a vastly improved volleyball team took down ninth-ranked Hope; individually, Jessica Shaw, ’17, ran to NCAA Division III All-American status in cross country.

magazine ranks Albion 40th on its national list of Best Private Colleges for Merit Aid, for high-achieving students.

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1,418

students were enrolled at Albion College in the fall 2016 semester (150 more than two years ago), as more than 400 new high school graduates arrived on campus for the second straight year, 16 of them from California. One third of the entering class identify themselves as underrepresented students.

50 video games (and no quarter slot!) are packed into an arcade machine built by Kevin Claucherty, ’18, and the Engineering Club.

Find it, and play it, on the second floor of the Kellogg Center.

HEARD ON CAMPUS “They are kind of like my kids now.”

—Biology major Tom Martin, ’17, who worked full-time over the summer tending the crops at the Albion College Student Farm.

FIRST YEAR • “I received a Student Research Partner grant to work in Dr. Craig Bieler’s lab, determining caffeine concentration in river water.”

• “I also majored in general music just because I enjoyed it.”

JUNIOR YEAR

SOPHOMORE YEAR • “I won Albion College’s concerto competition performing Aaron Copland’s Concerto for Clarinet.

I also bumped up my music major to performance.”

• “I survived Organic Chemistry!

I was also part of a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at Iowa State University.”

• “I became a chemistry teaching assistant for CHEM 121.”

• “I was selected to participate in Clarinetopia, a four-day festival at Michigan State University.”

SENIOR YEAR • “I am still in four music ensembles and in my second year as drum major.”

• “I am applying for graduate programs in hopes to pursue a master’s in clarinet performance.”

LIBERAL ARTS MIX TAPE The music of chemistry? Absolutely.

Grace Talaski, ’17, is the drum major for the British Eighth Marching Band; a clarinetist and saxophonist in multiple ensembles; and a chemistry and music performance double major who is following up on her molecular biology presentation at last year’s Elkin R. Isaac Student Research

Symposium with this spring’s seniorrecital premiere of her original clarinet composition featuring electronic music from recorded sounds in the lab.

Above, Talaski shares a harmony of highlights that have formed her own unique Albion compound.

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Reconnecting in Grand Fashion AFTER MISSING EACH OTHER ON THE LONGEST PORCH IN AMERICA—AND FOR 57 YEARS BEFORE THAT—ALUMNAE SHARE A MEMORABLE MACKINAC MEETUP.

By Chuck Carlson On the morning of June 8, 1959, Marion Yoki graduated from Albion College with a degree in art education.

That same afternoon, following through on a promise she made to herself not to get married before she graduated, Marion Yoki got married.

The man she married that day, and who would be her husband for the next 53 years, was Richard DeVinney, ’58. He was part of a family with a long history at Albion, one that included establishing a scholarship that went to a graduating senior who wanted to pursue the ministry or a related profession.

Marion and Dick had known each other most of their time at Albion but it wasn’t until 1958 that they began dating. “I called him to invite him to a sorority party, and he swears at the same time he was getting ready to call me to invite me to a fraternity party,” Marion remembers. “We got married in a little chapel behind Goodrich.”

At the ceremony was Marion’s younger sister Elizabeth, ’62, who served as maid of honor. A new friend, Carol Richardson, ’60,

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served as a bridesmaid. The two women had met the previous fall when they were assigned as counselors to an auxiliary freshman dorm known as North Acres.

In the more than five decades that followed, Marion and Carol did not get in touch, though the thought of each occasionally danced through the other’s head.

“We were in charge of 15 girls,” Carol says. “We had a downstairs bedroom with bunk beds and the tiniest bathroom you ever saw.”

“She was married,” Carol says.

“She had a different agenda. I was excited to come to California. It was a wild and wonderful adventure.”

Almost through necessity, they became friends. “You’re living together in a tiny room,” Marion explains. “We either got along or we didn’t.”

Carol stayed in California, married Bill Bjorkman, and eventually taught music for 31 years at Loma Prieta School in Los Gatos, about 50 miles south of San Francisco.

They got along so well, in fact, that when Marion told Carol of her post-graduation plans, she was happy to be a part of it. “I knew I was going to be in her wedding,” Carol says.

Marion and Dick moved to Grand Rapids in 1963, where she was a counselor at East Kentwood High School for 24 years before retiring and starting an art gallery in Glen Arbor, which the couple sold four years ago.

Soon after, Marion and Richard headed to Milford to start their new life together, where Richard pursued his master’s in music at the University of Michigan and Marion taught fifth grade. Carol earned her degree in education the following year and struck off for California with two other friends from Albion.

And that, as they say, was that.

Until it wasn’t.

The women remained close to their alma mater; twice they attended the College’s Grand Getaway on Mackinac Island, but neither time were they able to find each other.

In 2016, it was different. Both knew the other was on the list of likely attendees, so during the opening-

night reception, Carol decided to track down her old friend.

“I went up and down the big porch [at the Grand Hotel] looking for her and I couldn’t find her,” Carol says.

Finally, Carol called the front desk and asked for Marion’s room.

Soon, the college roommates of long ago connected and met in Carol’s suite.

“We had a little conclave then,” Carol says.

“It was a lot of catch-up time,” adds Marion, who attended the event with Elizabeth. (Dick passed away in 2013.)

Asked how it felt seeing each other for the first time in more than half a century, Carol laughs.

“I don’t think I look anything like I did,” she says. “I think she looks a little like she did. But 57 years can do a lot to a person.”

The 2017 Grand Getaway at the Grand Hotel is set for September 29October 1. For information, email collegeevents@albion.edu.

Pictured above: Marion DeVinney, ’59 (right), and her former Albion roommate and bridesmaid Carol Bjorkman, ’60 (center), at the 2016 Grand Getaway. At left is Marion’s sister (and maid of honor) Elizabeth Pixley, ’62.

Two Minutes with . . .

KEENA WILLIAMS

The 2009 alumna serves as director and president’s special advisor for global diversity.

Io Triumphe!: You were promoted into your current role last spring. As head of the Office of Intercultural Affairs, what would you describe as your top responsibilities?

Williams: Number one is supporting underrepresented students on our campus. Number two, now, is overseeing the Build Albion Fellows program, and number three is ensuring we are doing everything we can to have an open, welcoming, and inclusive campus community. It’s making sure students feel safe and supported. It’s making sure we offer the training necessary so that all members of our community are supported by faculty, staff, and other students. The way I describe Intercultural Affairs and what I do is that we help students find and create their own villages.

It would appear that, two years in, the Fellows program* is off to a good start.

Having grown up here, Build Albion Fellows carries a lot of weight and meaning for me. I can see the importance of the program, and its success is extremely important to me. I was already a part of it, but it just so happens that now I get the opportunity to

head that initiative, and I’m really excited about that.

You began your career at the College, then worked for three years as a high school language arts director down in Houston before returning to Albion in 2014. What does being a member of this community mean to you?

I have Albion city pride. Although my children are [Marshall] Red Hawks, I’m a Wildcat for life. But I also have this strong Albion College pride, which helps me navigate in both spaces and have difficult conversations with people who’ve maybe had a difficult history with the College. People have asked me about my interpretations about things that are happening.

I’m in a place where I can say positive things about both spaces.

I love having the opportunity to represent both because they become one for me. I can say when I love Albion, I love it all. I truly do.

What work goals do you have for the next few years?

I would like to see us leading efforts or be a model for what it looks like to have an inclusive community— that we are celebrating differences, that we are trained to have difficult conversations, and that

we are having those difficult conversations. In the past, we were looking for ways to have these conversations. Now, it’s “When are you having these conversations?”

There has always been outreach from our faculty, but I think, now, more faculty are willing and ready to have those conversations and ask questions, which is exciting.

On January 16, the College will host its second Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Dialogue and Service at Washington Gardner School. Two weeks later, the MLK Convocation and Community Celebration will be held in the Bohm Theatre for the third consecutive year. How have these events evolved in your view?

I thought the first Day of Dialogue and Service was great. It’s a multigenerational conversation, and we’re looking forward to bringing in more students in all aspects—the planning, the service, and informing what the dialogue looks like for that day.

The last two MLK convocations in the Bohm seem to have carried a special meaning between the College and the community. I think it’s a very different feeling in the Bohm. [The event] has its own aura, being in that space.

Keena Williams, ’09, graduated cum laude from Albion with degrees in English (Creative Writing) and Ethnic Studies.

Do you have a favorite College tradition or routine?

Anything I can bring my kids to at the College is something that I enjoy—giving them the opportunity to be here on campus in ways that I was not as a child growing up here, and making them feel that the campus is as much a part of their community as going to their grandmother’s house. And they love being here. I’m surprised they’re not knocking on my door right now.

Interview by John Perney. * Learn more about the Build Albion Fellows program at albion.edu/fellows.

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INTO THE JET STREAM Twenty for ’20: For these rising young Britons in the coming years, it’s all systems go.

A few months ago the Class of 2020 formally matriculated to Albion College. It’s a fact this fortysomething, 20th-century college grad—whose admission essay recalled his first Major League Baseball game (Yankee Stadium, second row) in 1978— is still trying to wrap his head around. We can be nostalgic all we want, but we are truly in the 21st century now.

So let’s embrace that reality.

And let’s take advantage of the calendar, and the moment, while we’re at it. In the pages that follow, we’ll meet 20 Britons spanning two decades who are breaking through and taking on the issues of today and tomorrow with the right combination of big dreams, bold ideas, and good old fashioned hard work.

By no means an exclusive group, these young men and women, and their stories, are representative of the vitally important role Albion College continues to play in nurturing the kernels of greatness firstyear students bring with them to campus. Kernels that began to take shape in high school, often after a kid’s initial spark took flight.

Take a ride with us.

—John Perney Contributors: Chuck Carlson, Amanda Layne, ’14, Bobby Lee, John Perney, Claire Van Raaphorst, ’14, and Jake Weber

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TUNED IN TO OPPORTUNITY

He has worked for CareerBuilder. com, starting in 2004 as a sales executive and eventually becoming general manager and chief executive officer for the company’s joint venture in China.

He helped start a nongovernmental organization, Countryside Children Organization, which created a safe home and school environment for children and single mothers in Cambodia. (He has since given it to Rotary International, but he is still on the board of directors.)

And since July, he’s been managing strategic aerospace programs at Gartner, one of the world’s top information technology research and advisory companies.

Living once again in his native Detroit, in a revitalized home in the West Village, he credits Albion with shaping him to become a person who captures joy by creating delight.

One day, years ago, Nick Cucinella and history professor Wesley Dick found themselves on the roof of a grain elevator that overlooked downtown Albion. Cucinella asked Dick if he wanted to go to the edge of the elevator and look over.

Dick declined.

“But Nick went out on the roof and looked over the edge,” Dick says with a reminiscent smile. “He has the gene for looking over the edge.”

Cucinella, 38, has been looking over the edge ever since.

Sometimes, he admits, it’s simply to find out what awaits and sometimes, he needs to see what’s looking back at him.

“There are these people who always seem to come into my life and tell me what’s best,” he says. “I hope that never ends.”

Since graduating from Albion with a degree in philosophy, Cucinella has run the eclectic gamut from entertainment to business to philanthropy.

His journeys have taken him to places where he has played trombone for the Temptations, the O’Jays, and Aretha Franklin.

He has been a movie executive producer (his first film, This Is Martin Bonner, won the 2013 Best of NEXT Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival).

“I was lucky to have a hall advisor at Wesley who cared for us like we were family,” Cucinella says. “He taught us to foster relationships with College staff and guest speakers who would change my life. My curiosity was welcomed and people just kept giving me more unique opportunities, inside the classroom but more so outside the classroom.

“I look back now with amazement that the 20-year-old Nick had meaningful exposure to people like Howard Zinn, Stephen Jay Gould, and Cleve Jones,” he adds.

“I had lunch with Kurt Vonnegut and Salman Rushdie. Who does that? I tried to never miss an opportunity to be invited.”

Cucinella recalls the serendipitous series of events through a trumpet-playing friend that led to his steady gig with Motown acts.

Eventually those nights playing music also resulted in a new daytime role, with CareerBuilder.

“The only reason I got that job was my boss said if a 22-yearold white guy can get a job with the Temptations playing the trombone, he can get a 55-yearold executive to buy digital advertising,” Cucinella says with a laugh. He still performs occasionally today.

Cucinella points to Wes and Leslie Dick, chemistry professor Cliff Harris, Vice President for Student Affairs Sally Walker, and former President Peter Mitchell, among many others, as people who gave him free rein to ask questions, to make mistakes, and to develop the skills they knew he would need.

“I had incredible access to these people,” he says, adding that he keeps in regular contact with them. “I’m 100 percent sure that was what taught me to be so comfortable talking to people at the executive level at a young age.”

Since then, the world has opened to Cucinella, and the symmetry has never been lost on him.

“There was always a time when something came open,” he says.

“Even though I never felt I was the best at something, often I was the best option. I was responsible, agile, on time, interdisciplinary minded, reliable. Being the best option seemed to be more attractive than being the best.”

And he knows there’s still plenty for him to do. “I’m not changing the strategy,” he says.

Of course, he will keep looking over the edge.

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PERSEVERANCE PERSONIFIED

“Albion gave me the confidence I needed to know I could battle everything in my way,” says accountant Brandy Smith Terwilliger, adding that college was never a conversation in what she describes as a less than ideal home life in Potterville, 30 miles north of campus. It took convincing from a high school counselor and a particularly tough basketball coach. “They could see something in me; they knew I was college material.”

She chose Albion because it offered the best financial aid, but she also worked three jobs and barely scraped by. “I must have some natural internal drive because I kept going,” Terwilliger says. “I kept studying and working.”

The battles continued after she received her degree. Several years into a promising career at Lansingbased Maner Costerisan and, later, the Michigan Department of Treasury, an expecting Terwilliger noticed some odd symptoms and saw a few doctors to get to the bottom of it.

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The diagnosis: Stage IV lymphoma.

At six months’ pregnant.

“Even though my husband was there, I felt so alone,” Terwilliger says. “It was there, at that moment, I started my faith.”

Her first child, a healthy daughter, was induced a month early while she was receiving chemotherapy and radiation. In remission in 2012, Terwilliger rejoined Maner Costerisan in a leadership role that allowed maximum flex time, which proved crucial during another setback. In October 2015, she found her husband unconscious after a grand mal seizure. An MRI showed an avocado-sized tumor in the front lobe of his brain. Two weeks later, he underwent 14 hours of surgery at the University of Michigan.

“It’s sometimes hard for me to relate to coworkers who just live and breathe work,” says Terwilliger, who volunteers in her community any way she can and adds that she “didn’t know how many good people were out there” until she and her husband fell ill.

Yet her work, focused primarily on nonprofit clients, recently brought a new reward: On January 1, Terwilliger, now also the proud mother of a son, officially will become a partner at Maner Costerisan.

“I want to show all young women you can have it all,” she says.

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FULL OF ENERGY “Commodity trading is not about flat price, it’s about price volatility,” says Tony Plagens. And he should know: his career has centered around the oil and gas industry nearly from the moment he earned his CPA and started at Ernst & Young, shortly after his Albion graduation.

Six and a half years later, following stints in Chicago and London, he made “the big jump” from public accounting to the energy companies themselves—first to BP, then to ConocoPhillips (which included an extended stay in Beijing) and an Oklahoma City startup. In August 2015 he joined Mercuria Energy Trading in Houston; this past September he was named controller for the Swiss firm’s North American operations.

Plagens’ day-to-day has never been so much about the dollars and cents behind the extraction and production of crude and natural gas as it is about accounting for the movement of physical product—from well to refinery, and refinery to pump. Drilling into the variables involved can be downright byzantine, but in the end he

says it’s often as simple as “How do I move it from Oklahoma to Texas? … It has to move between locations in hopes the sales price is greater than the cost and transport fees.”

While oil volatility has slowed since a significant price decline in 2014, Plagens’ career has continued to be on the move.

More recently, he returned from a Switzerland swing this summer at the headquarters of Mercuria, where he says he may be putting his complete liberal arts background to its best use yet.

“The E&M and accounting courses were key, but then there are the intangibles—taking a problem, breaking it down into its simple factors, finding the connecting issues and views,” Plagens says. “A lot of what I do is breaking down silos between groups so we understand each other. It’s a lot of communication.

That was part of the beauty at Albion. You learn to appreciate these different perspectives which will serve you later on down the road.”

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SHINING A LIGHT ON DISEASE In more ways than one, Craig Streu has found the right chemistry.

“I enjoy what I’m doing,” he says with a smile. “My wife and I just bought a house right next to campus. This is a long-term plan. I don’t know if there is another.”

Say what you like about never going home again, but Streu is as close as he’ll ever be. In his second year back at Albion as an assistant professor of biochemistry, he sits in his Putnam Hall office four doors down from where he decided chemistry was what he liked and teaching was what he needed to do. It’s where he learned, under the tutelage of Andrew French, that he and chemistry were a perfectly matched set of reactants.

The Caro native thought he would major in political science and perhaps become a lawyer.

His mom wanted him to be an accountant, but “she didn’t have to take the classes,” Streu quips.

And his dad, a high school machine trades teacher, wasn’t impressed. “My dad said ‘liberal arts’ is another word for unemployed,” Streu remembers.

By his sophomore year, Streu was drawn to the part of chemistry in which molecules and compounds sometimes just go together, like a key fitting a lock. “I said, ‘This is awesome,’” he recalls. “And I was good at it. ... I was hooked by the creative process.”

French, who took on Streu as a Student Research Partner, saw it, too. “He was brave. We tell students that 90 percent of the time what you’re doing won’t work, but Craig was interested in trying new things. He was fearless.”

After Albion, Streu earned his Ph.D. and did a postdoctorate fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania.

While finishing up he came across some research that intrigued him. He watched a group activate (essentially “turn on”) genes and DNA with light, and he wondered if the same thing could be done with small-molecule pharmaceuticals.

He performed his first few experiments at Penn and continued the project in his first faculty position at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Then came the opportunity to teach at Albion last year, and Streu brought his research with him.

He now leads a core of 11 students—collectively known as the “Streu Crew”—as they continue to work on chemical methods for studying and modifying biological systems.

One of their major projects is developing light-responsive chemotherapy that can be used in battling diseases from Alzheimer’s to arthritis to cancer.

Called photodynamic therapies, the idea is to activate pharmaceuticals selectively with specific-wavelength LEDs only where they are needed, like tumors, to avoid the unintended side effects that result from typical drugs that are active throughout the body. Streu’s group, which has published three research

papers in the last two years, has been working in concert, and in competition, with a larger graduate research group at the University of Munich in Germany. But he says the work is growing in notoriety.

“We’ve been contacted by other labs at places like the National Institutes of Health who want to use our compounds,” says Streu. “There are more groups jumping on board. It validates what we’re doing.”

It also validates the Mitten State redux for Streu and his wife of 11 years, Jayme Cannon, ’04, whom he met at Albion and who is now a research scientist at the University of Michigan.

“I’m 100 percent into where I am now,” he says.

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DOCTOR AND ADVOCATE “Watching my parents take basic pediatric care like oral rehydration and vaccination to urban slums and rural areas in India inspired me to build a life that would help me address inequalities and make a difference in people’s lives,” says Samata Singhi, chief resident of the child neurology program at Boston Children’s Hospital/ Harvard Medical School.

Knowing that 21st-century health care would be about far more than just medicine, Singhi studied chemistry and economics at Albion and earned a master’s degree at the London School of Economics before embarking on her medical training at Case Western Reserve University. Now, in Boston, Singhi researches pediatric epilepsy while helping her young patients and their families manage the many syndromes that cause it. She continues to keep her eye on the “big picture” of access and advocacy.

“I want to be the kind of doctor who can provide not only individual health care but also advocate for my patients at large and affect change at a population and systems level,” Singhi says. “Innovations in genetics and pharmaceuticals are providing us with greater insight into the etiology and targeted management of various epilepsy syndromes. I want to be at the forefront of this dynamic field, ensuring that children with epilepsy, regardless of their nationality or socioeconomic status, are able to avail all of the medical innovations.”

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MUSICAL WORKS ALL HER OWN

HER WAY WITH WORDS

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Language has always spoken to Marisa Fortuna Fontanges.

Like many of her peers, Amy Riske found herself in a dilemma: passionate about her studies, but not as keen on the career track they seemed to indicate. She graduated from Albion with a self-designed major in music composition, an achievement that led to a full graduate scholarship at Bowling Green State University.

What she learned there, more than anything else, was “what it meant to be a composer and what that lifestyle was like,” Riske says. “I knew that for my personality and what I wanted out of life, I needed something more predictable.”

Riske found the “perfect intersection” for her formal training and self-described Type-A tendencies in program direction at Chicago’s acclaimed Merit School of Music, one of only 16 accredited pre-collegiate music schools in the country and which serves nearly 5,000 students annually.

“Administration is what I do,” smiles Riske. As director of the piano, early childhood, and general music programs, Merit’s mission—and an overarching part of her work—is removing barriers to participation and providing access.

“When you start taking away all of those barriers, you bring in a cultural diversity that is unlike any I’ve ever seen,” says Riske, noting that Merit draws Chicagoarea children from across all socioeconomic backgrounds.

“We have so many success stories,” she says, referring to the many Merit alumni who perform with the country’s top orchestras and theaters. “But this job is about the day-today students who come here because it’s a safe space and allow music to be a vehicle to get into college or to reach their full potential. When I see the influence I can have on a student’s life, that’s why I’m here.”

“I have always been interested in Spanish and in Latin America, particularly Mexico,” she says. “Even in high school, I always knew I wanted it to be a part of my career.”

So she pursued that interest, first at Albion, where the Gerstacker Institute member and language tutor graduated magna cum laude with degrees in economics and management and Spanish. It continued at Faurecia, a large international automotive supplier, where she managed corporate communications at the company’s Mexico sites. Then, during her master’s work in public policy at the University of Michigan, she landed a State Department internship at the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, where she learned of the intricacies of government and foreign policy.

Later, when her husband, Romain, was transferred to Mexico City for his job in the auto industry, Fontanges spent nearly two years teaching English there. “It enriched my life,” she says.

Now, her love of language has taken her to a new, but then again familiar, place. As an immigration case specialist at Roby Law Associates, a small family practice in Royal Oak, she helps attorneys with various aspects of immigration law, including case intake, strategizing, and legal research.

“We are dealing with people’s lives and futures, which is a tremendous responsibility,” says Fontanges, who works on both family cases and those involving corporate, employmentbased immigration. “I’ve found something I’m really passionate about that has a lot of opportunity, especially as immigration policy continues to be a hot topic in this country and around the world.”

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MEETING THE NEED “This is exactly why I do what I do.”

After six years of philanthropic travel and countless memories, Mallory Brown points to one moment in particular: 2015 in Haiti, where she was delivering clothes for World Clothes Line, the buy-one-give-one business she launched five years earlier. During her visit, she encountered a single mother of five who was still living in a displaced persons’ shelter following the devastating 2010 earthquake.

Brown immediately took action.

That day, she held her first campaign on the crowdfunding website CrowdRise in hopes of raising $5,000 to move the family into a permanent home. Twentyfour hours later, she more than doubled her goal. The $11,000 provided a home with furniture, enrolled the children in school, and bought food for the family.

The economics and management, French, and Gerstacker Institute alumna has kept in contact with the family and recently was overwhelmed to hear that the mother of five is opening up her home to disabled foster children.

“We’ve genuinely changed her life, and now she’s going on to change others,” Brown says. “It’s the ripple effect.”

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Brown’s ripple moved outward from Albion. Originally the Farmington Hills native was interested in becoming an event planner, with a dream of somehow being associated with the Olympics. Time abroad in France stirred up a passion for international work; Brown graduated a semester early and used those extra months to travel the world. Upon her return to Michigan she tried her hand in film and magazines, but found herself drawn to the socially conscious one-for-one business concept popularized with shoes a few years prior by Toms.

Similarly, Brown wanted to focus on basic human needs, and combine that with her love for travel, philanthropy, media, and business. Gerstacker friends Josh Fales, ’06, and Steve Hall, ’09, of Ann Arbor-based online custom-design T-shirt retailer CreateMyTee, coached her on merchandising, and soon World Clothes Line was born. An item purchased from the World Clothes Line website would also provide an article of clothing to someone in need abroad, and Brown would be there to hand-deliver the clothes, shooting videos and photos and sharing stories of people being helped in small yet impactful ways.

“Most people [who start their own business] would start it on the side and let it grow organically,” Brown says. “I dove all in. I quit my job.

I did nothing else. It was 100 percent World Clothes Line.

“It was a risk,” she continues. “I didn’t take a salary, but I was 24 years old. I could afford to take that risk.”

Brown’s all-in approach continues through her growing partnership with CrowdRise. She has served as director of its 24-Hour Impact Project for nearly two years, having organized successful and widely recognized campaigns ranging from securing space and equipment to continue a Detroit homeless community’s treasured weekly barbecue tradition to raising start-up funds for 30 women in Ethiopia (above) to launch their own businesses.

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With visits to 32 countries, 10 CrowdRise campaigns, and a six-year-old clothing company already under her belt, what’s next for this 30-year-old visionary?

She will continue to grow her personal brand, Travel Mal, as well as her philanthropic efforts around the world. New opportunities keep coming: Brown just returned from a celebrity crowdfunding campaign that helped Syrian refugees in Greece.

She also works as a motivational speaker and aims to inspire a sense of purpose in younger generations. But above all, Brown will stay true to her mission.

“I believe the world is filled with so many people with so much need, and so many people who want to give,” she says. “My goal is to connect the two.”

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TIPPING THE SCALES “It was 2 a.m. on election night and I got a text from a coworker—one of our artists was performing on a political talk show that morning and wanted to switch up the song in light of the election results,” recounts Ben Landry, a director in the business and legal affairs department of Atlantic Records.

“The show’s lawyers and I needed to make sure the necessary rights were in place before the show was scheduled to tape. It’s important that our artists are able to make creative decisions on the fly, and I’m a part of the team that makes that happen.”

Bridging the capricious—and sometimes contentious— interests of art and commerce was just the challenge that led Landry to jump from a white-shoe New York law firm to Atlantic, where he is one of the youngest attorneys on a very small team. Along with the traditional business and legal work of negotiating record deals, the University of Chicago law graduate is helping the label navigate new-media issues related to the industry’s transition from a brick-andmortar, CD market to a digital world of downloads and streaming.

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BANKING ON DISRUPTION “One of the things I love about Atlantic is that I get to pursue a wide range of activities,” says Landry, noting that he’s also been able to work in a business development capacity, sourcing and championing new partnerships. And occasionally he’s the voice on the phone smoothing ruffled feathers to ensure his artists are able to shoot videos at Las Vegas casinos and host release parties at Hollywood mansions.

“I’m applying the same intellectual fearlessness that I developed at Albion to my practice at Atlantic,” says the political science and philosophy grad, who remains connected to the classroom through his biannual series of guest lectures on record deals and M&A transactions at the University of Michigan Law School. “I’m practicing outside the scope of a typical lawyer’s life and I’ve found some success with it.”

Kasey Kaplan claims he found his passion by accident, but it started with his exposure to social media marketing at Albion.

“I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do with my life [during my time at Albion]. At that time I knew I liked social media, new technology, and whitewater kayaking,” says Kaplan, cofounder of Urban FT, a four-year-old financial tech company that has quickly made inroads with its digital banking platform. “[Communication studies professor] Andy Boyan introduced me to the idea of social media and how it was changing how people communicated. Because it was such a new concept at the time, I was interested in understanding how it would evolve as a medium.”

retail banking with other personal financial management and local discovery tools, like area vendor suggestions.

It wasn’t long after honing his entrepreneurial skills with graduate work at Oakland University that Kaplan became chief marketing officer at a banking start-up geared toward millennials. A year later, he helped launch Urban FT, whose white-label “lifestyle application” allows small and medium-sized banks to combine

With Urban FT off and running, Kaplan can add consulting work and teaching an online digital marketing course to his already crowded plate. “I work out for an hour a day as an escape, and I like landscape photography and backpacking outdoors,” says the former president of Albion’s canoe club. “I go crazy when I’m not doing something.”

“Potential drives me,” says Kaplan, Urban FT’s president. “I’m also stubborn and I don’t quit at things.

Doing a start-up is incredibly hard; there are several times when we should have failed.”

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CLEARING SCIENTIFIC 11 PATHWAYS

“I knew I wanted to do research that helped solve an environmental problem,” remembers Kara Sherman Nell about her time at Albion.

Her notion was cultivated in chemistry professor Cliff Harris’ first-year seminar, The Crucial Generation, and further evolved through the people and experiences she encountered within the Center for Sustainability and the Environment.

Five years later, Nell has completed her Ph.D. in materials chemistry at the University of Oregon after being named this past spring as one of the university’s 25 Ducks, an honor recognizing leadership, innovation, and passion. Specifically, Nell is designing and creating waterpurification materials that remove toxins such as lead and other metals in disaster zones, while also researching specialized cleanup methods.

Additionally, she is making sustainable materials that are capable of mining desired metals from the ocean, a possible alternative to open-pit mining practices.

Nell emphasizes the continuing impact of her undergraduate years. “Albion taught me a lot, but most importantly it taught me to really care about my work, and the people around me,” she says. “This caring has been instilled in me, and it has

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served me well. No matter what you are doing, care about the people around you just as much as the topic you are studying.”

As head of UO Graduate Women in Science, Nell has connected with youth who are aspiring to work within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, specifically focusing her energy on improving gender diversity.

It’s an issue that has impacted her personally, as she has noticed fewer and fewer women standing with her as she continues on in her research.

“Girls shouldn’t be pushed away from science,” Nell says, “and all interested people should be supported during the long, arduous path of becoming a scientist.”

Soon, Nell will begin a postdoctoral position at the Molecular Foundry, part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where she will create self-assembling semiconductor materials aimed at significantly lowering the environmental impact of electronic devices. “Further out than that,” she says, “I look forward to pursuing a variety of research and social interests, and hope to contribute a small part to ‘saving the world.’”

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON PHOTO

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UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS PHOTO

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MAKING MARS HER MISSION

Follow the water.

According to Holly Farris, a fifthyear space and planetary science Ph.D. student at the University of Arkansas, it is “a motto often used by NASA in motivating new missions and for the search for life.”

“Liquid water is an essential requisite for life as we know it,” she explains, “and is always a first step in examining the past, present, and/or future habitability of Earth and other worlds, in our solar system and beyond.”

For the Montague, Michigan, native, that other world is the red planet, as her research primarily focuses on the presence of liquid water on the surface of Mars.

“Mars is a hot topic right now with the plans of manned exploration in the near future, and will offer a lot of opportunities in the coming years with the launch of Mars 2020 and ExoMars,” Farris says, alluding, respectively, to NASA’s future rover mission and a European/Russian spacecraft that landed on Mars in October.

Farris’s initial foray into what has become an all-encompassing planetary science journey began in her Albion physics classes, and

turned more serious once she started collaborating in earnest with her advisor, Nicolle Zellner.

The professor’s NASA-funded research into lunar-impact glass sparked a fascination and opened Farris’s eyes to the possibilities that exist for a graduate with a physics degree.

Zellner encouraged Farris to get involved beyond her coursework, and the student heeded the advice. In the summer between her sophomore and junior years, Farris built her own telescope out of everyday materials for a project sponsored by the College’s Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity. She also served as a teaching assistant in Zellner’s astronomy labs and led the campus astronomy club.

The next summer a path beyond Albion began to take shape, as Farris was accepted into the National Science Foundation’s

Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.

During those first months working with Arkansas’ planetary science team, she helped conduct NASAfunded experiments using a Mars simulation chamber.

By this time, Farris was also finishing up a minor in art, which Zellner believes factored into her student’s scientific direction. “Having that creative understanding and being able to see patterns in data because of her artistic interests, I think she found that planetary science was what she wanted to do,” Zellner says.

“She had a drive, figured it out, and made it happen.”

Soon Farris was formally accepted into the Arkansas Ph.D. program, and over the ensuing years what has been groundbreaking research into water has involved bone-dry conditions more than anything else. Last year, with a colleague from the NASA Ames Research

Center in California, she ran experiments in northern Chile’s Atacama Desert (left), which receives less than one millimeter of rainfall annually and is known to be the driest place on the planet. The Atacama’s thin atmosphere, large temperature swings, and vast salt plains (called salars) make it arguably the best Mars-like site on Earth. Within the rocks of these salars live halophiles, salt-loving bacteria that can thrive on mere traces of water. The salt rocks can pull tiny amounts of water from the atmosphere and sustain moisture, enough to fuel a microbial community.

Farris’s research examines the same process, but with Marsrelevant salts, like chlorides and perchlorates. She placed samples in the desert and collected a year’s worth of data, measuring temperature, relative humidity, and electric conductivity at varying depths. The work is crucial, Farris says, because of its relevance to NASA’s goals in the years ahead. “The implications are very much astrobiological and could bear importance for future landing site selection and/ or manned missions to Mars,” she explains.

Farris plans to defend her dissertation in the spring, after which she hopes to land a postdoctoral position at a NASA facility, a research institute or university, or in private industry.

“Ultimately, the dream job would be working on an instrument team for a NASA mission,” she says.

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ARTISTRY IN BLOOM 20

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SPEAKING UP, SPEAKING OUT Lindsay Pennala misses her fifth- through eighth-graders deeply, even though she still sees them regularly.

It was the fall of 2009 and first-year student Soe Yu Nwe couldn’t start her biology major because there were no more seats available in the introductory course. Ceramics I, however, fit her schedule— and, as they say, the rest is history. Two years later, Nwe took top honors in a statewide competition intended for graduate art students; in 2015, she completed an M.F.A. at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design.

“Soe Yu became one of the most gifted students I’ve ever worked with,” says ceramics professor Lynne Chytilo, who invited Nwe to serve as Albion’s spring 2016 Philip C. Curtis Artist-in-Residence.

By the end of the year, Nwe will have exhibited her work not only in Albion but in Massachusetts, Los Angeles, New York City, the Philippines, Indonesia, and her home country of Myanmar.

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On the cusp of a career of which few of her peers can dream, Nwe has set for herself the added challenge of crafting her success in Myanmar. As the country emerges after decades of military rule, Nwe has the opportunity to make a real impact on the arts. Opening a studio will be tough, though, when just finding supplies— common items in any U.S. art store—currently ranges from difficult to impossible.

Nwe has taken this problem as an inspiration. “I might be able to become the distributor of material—clay and glaze—in Myanmar. And hopefully this will sustain my artistic career and also benefit the community,” she says. “I want to be able to do art in the international arena for a long time.”

“It hurts me not to teach students because I became incredibly close with them,” says Pennala, who earlier this year received national recognition from Teach for America (TFA) after concluding her two-year assignment on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in northern South Dakota.

But she continues to impact her 60 students from the Lakota and Dakota nations by coaching new TFA arrivals at Rock Creek Grant School and other schools in the area. “I do work closely with their teachers,” Pennala says. “I really love it so far, because I feel like I can make a greater impact.”

It follows her own life-changing experience at Standing Rock that began shortly after receiving her Albion degrees in English and psychology. In recognizing Pennala, TFA said she “empowers her students to be vocal advocates of the injustices they face in their community.”

“I felt humbled and honored to have the opportunity for my students’ stories to be heard.

They have so much to say,” says Pennala, who grew up in West Ishpeming on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and studied abroad in Hyderabad, India.

Standing Rock has remained in the news amid the ongoing protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline. The movement connects with Pennala in terms of land rights and environmental protections, but it also touches on something deeper and raw.

“I feel like more people need to be impassioned to inspire change,” she says. “In social studies classrooms in privileged communities, the truth isn’t getting there.”

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REINTERPRETING WILDE “Some of my most recent research has to do with reevaluating scholarship that’s been accepted, taught, and unquestioned for nearly a century,” says Phillip Carlisle, a second-year graduate student in English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Brandeis University.

Carlisle notes that many “old school” scholars of Oscar Wilde fall into two main camps regarding the author’s decision to stand trial for indecency in 19th-century London: Wilde was a hero defending his right to privacy, or a fool who believed fame would shield him from the law. Using the wealth of Internet-accessible materials, theories gleaned from his interdisciplinary study, and the critical-thinking skills he attributes to his Albion education, Carlisle is developing a more nuanced and potentially alternative set of explanations for Wilde’s actions, which he believes will, in turn, shed new light on Wilde’s life and work.

At Albion, Carlisle did extensive scholarship on Wilde, even writing a fulllength musical on the trials of the Irish-born playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet who eventually was found guilty and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

Accustomed to the “Albion model” of working collegially with faculty members, Carlisle set up a meeting last year with a well-known Wildean scholar at UCLA, Joseph Bristow.

“Some of my friends couldn’t believe I had the nerve to do this, given the gap between a first-year graduate student and a seminally published scholar, but the professor responded positively,” Carlisle says. “Albion helped prepare me for those types of oneon-one interactions with brilliant, passionate people, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunities that have come about from that preparation.”

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SOCIAL ACCELERATOR When his friends started complaining about the number of car photos on his Instagram page, Josh Massab decided he needed to start a blog devoted to this interest.

Before he graduated last May, ExoticarTalk.com had more than 110,000 members and was generating advertising revenue, while Massab was named an Instagram top influencer.

This “passion project,” along with several automotive internships, caught the attention of ROUSH Performance, where Massab works as a product marketing manager. As an intern, Massab helped launch one of the three performance exhaust systems that are now the focus of his particular media and marketing expertise.

“Social media is becoming such a big part of this industry.

We cannot ignore it,” he says.

“One of our strategies is to work through social influencers— people who have a large

number of followers. I’ve been an influencer, and I can see the benefit of selling products through these online channels.”

Massab is also developing messages to go with his marketing strategy. “I’m trying to reach my demographic, the passionate car enthusiast.

They look at vehicles online, see custom parts, and say, ‘Hey, that’s cool, I want that.’

My customers don’t usually search through catalogs anymore. There’s a new way of buying parts online, and it’s the channel I’m able to successfully use.

“This job is challenging; I’m involved in everything from product development to postsale marketing,” says Massab, pictured above next to a 2014 Lamborghini Huracán in Nice, France. “I have a serious passion for cars. It makes my work very exciting.”

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STUDENTS TURN

Building up to the breakthrough—the Albion experience makes it possible.

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Farmington Hills, Michigan, native Amanda Quasunella has no qualms talking about her future octopus tattoo.

After all, the driven four-year women’s soccer defender and Mitchell Towers resident assistant has been looking forward to becoming a marine biologist since the third grade and, as she puts it, “I’ve never changed my mind all my life, to be honest.”

“They’re really mysterious,” she says admiringly about the eight-limbed cephalopods. “They almost seem cuddly but dangerous at the same time. I just have a deep respect for them.”

For Quasunella, who plans to take a year off before pursuing graduate school options, work aboard research vessels is one chartable career course following her Sea Education Association (SEA) semester last spring that gave her an up-close understanding of the world’s oceans while providing leadership, teamwork, and study opportunities— both on shore in Massachusetts and during a six-week voyage from New Zealand to Tahiti that included stops at the Chatham Islands.

“The professor I worked with in SEA focused on squid, and that kind of added fuel to my fire,” Quasunella says. “Seeing his face light up about his research with squid is how I picture myself when I talk about octopus one day.”

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Aaron Smit has learned that he likes a challenge. Indeed, he’s learned he needs a challenge.

“I like pressure. I like to make tough decisions,” says the economics and management major, adding, “I like to help people be the best they can be.”

The Hamilton, Michigan, native is trying to do that for both a college and a town that have come to mean so much to him.

“The four years I’m here I see value in supporting the community,” he says. “It’s important for students to invest in the community where their school is.”

One way Smit has done so is through Albion Outfitters, a small business he cofounded last summer that provided canoeing and kayaking opportunities on the Kalamazoo River. The venture was based out of the College’s Beese-Havens Boathouse.

As for what follows graduation, Smit already has an eye toward that: “I want to get up early, stay late, and go to a place that makes a difference.”

Sounds like a challenge.

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There’s not much that doesn’t interest Duuluu Naranbat. He is the only current Ford Institute member majoring in biochemistry; he’s also the lead photographer and art designer for the Albionian yearbook and a member of Delta Sigma Phi and Student Senate. An internship last summer focused on 3D printing while he simultaneously helped start a business venture aimed at getting plugged-in twentysomethings to put down their phones for a paper-only guide to Ulaanbaatar hot spots.

“Albion College is a great spot for me. If I was in a big university, I couldn’t do all these things,” Naranbat says. The son and grandson of doctors might combine his major with his design interest and work in biotechnology, or his science and Ford studies might help him contribute to health policy in his native Mongolia. “Hopefully I can disperse my education and experiences back home to help many people. But I still don’t know what I’ll do; I’m still learning and we’ll see how it goes.”

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This is a new generation, says Taj Wallace, and he wants to be at the leading edge of everything it can be.

“Our generation is full of acceptance,” he explains. Wallace, born and raised in Albion, is part of the second class of Build Albion Fellows who are receiving a four-year education from the College in exchange for work and service in the community.

He has already learned how important acceptance of others is today. “It’s not fair to treat anyone differently. At the end of the day, they’re still a person and you treat them with the same dignity and moral standard.”

Wallace was among the first group of Albion High School students who had to deal with the closing of their school and graduate from Marshall High, 13 miles to the west. But for him, it was a chance to learn, grow, and mature. “Honestly, it wasn’t awful,” he says.

Already pursuing music education and English as college majors, Wallace is thriving after a first semester that included playing percussion in the British Eighth marching band, running cross country, and joining the Black Student Alliance. “High school prepared me for this. If you work hard in high school, you’ll be prepared.”

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FACULTY FUTURECAST: EYEING 2020 AND BEYOND 20/20 Vision: Toward a Dialogue of Change

Dominick Quinney Assistant Professor of Ethnic Studies The entering class of 2020 has presented Albion College with one of the most diverse student bodies since the inception of the institution. With diversity come new approaches to learning, thinking, and experiencing an ever-changing world. One of those approaches includes meaningful, engaged dialogues at multiple levels—in the classroom, across campus, and throughout the community. As a society, we often encounter conflict and dissonance as a result of not enough meaningful dialogue.

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Through dialogue we can begin to foster a community of learners that can empathize—taking on the feelings and experiences of others in a manner that allows for better understanding of various experiences of the human condition. For many, engaging in dialogues in the digital age can feel new, awkward, and sometimes uncomfortable, but it should be understood that the idea of learning is far from individualistic, or private. This means having healthy, thoughtprovoking, and respectful conversations everywhere—in our classrooms, in the library, the residence halls, or even over dinner. Furthermore, the idea of engaging in conversations across varying intersections of identity—race, class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, faith, and many other intersections—adds to the idea that conversations should not be one-dimensional. We bring each of these intersecting aspects of identity and the lessons and experiences with each of them to our interactions and conversations with one another.

In recognizing identity as very complex and intersectional, there is a power in the ability to connect, empathize, and recognize the humanity in

others. Albion College’s class of 2020 and the entire campus has the ability to do just that— recognize the power of dialogue, something scholar bell hooks, in her 2010 book Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom, calls “intellectual nourishment.”

I envision a campus that maintains a promotion of critical thought, community engagement, and social change. A transformative conversation is cooperative— learning to actively listen and hear those we encounter, and understand there is a lesson in all of our encounters. In our conversations we have the ability to build community, and begin to positively change our communities—one conversation at a time. In learning about others, there is a lesson we can learn about ourselves.

Dr. Quinney, who joined the Albion faculty in 2013, received his B.S. and Ph.D. from Michigan State University. His dissertation explored the lived experiences of eight Black student activist scholars on the campus of a predominantly white institution.

On the Trail for Planetary Life Nicolle Zellner Associate Professor of Physics It’s an exciting time to be a space scientist! Not only are we continuing to use orbiters and landers to learn about our planetary neighbors, but we are beginning to remotely explore planets outside of our solar system.

As of mid-September 2016, almost 3,400 planets are confirmed to be orbiting a star other than our own and more than 4,600 objects are candidate planets. That means that in less than 20 years, we have gone from zero exoplanets to more than 3,400 exoplanets, with thousands more yet to be discovered. Just 20 years! Soon we will be remotely detecting atmospheres around those planets and even, if we’re clever enough, figuring out if the molecules indicate the presence of life.

Closer to home, in the next 10 years, both NASA and ESA (the European Space Agency) plan to have spacecraft on their way to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, to determine whether or not anything interesting (i.e., life) lurks in its global ocean beneath its icy crust. Additionally, a mission to Mars to bring back samples of Martian rock and soil to test for signs of past or present life is also in the development stages; initial launches of the first pieces of sample-return architecture (i.e., machinery) could occur as early as 2022.

That means by 2040 (give or take a few years), we’ll have a pretty good idea if life in our solar system is common or rare.

NASA also plans to lasso a piece of an asteroid and bring it to lunar orbit so that astronauts, including, perhaps, Albion’s own Josh Cassada, ’95, can work on it, practicing with tools and techniques necessary for life on Mars and beyond.

No matter the outcome of those investigations, the recent announcement by Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, to send humans to Mars as early as 2024 means that life (even if it’s human) will be found on other planets—and in my lifetime. That’s something that seemed impossible when I was a kid, but to think it’s actually going to happen means that science fiction can become reality, if we wait long enough.

Dr. Zellner, pictured in the observatory atop Palenske Hall, joined the Albion faculty in 2005. The recipient of several NASA grants for her continuing research into lunar impact glass, she received her B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Our Augmented World, on Display Andy Boyan Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Earlier this fall, as part of a class exercise in Communication Studies 205, Mass Communication, I asked my mostly junior and senior students to make some predictions, about anything that comes to mind, ranging from 50 to 100 years out. What they offered up was interesting and wideranging. Among their predictions: • No in-person relationships— all digitized relationships • Nobody goes to the bathroom anymore (cloud bathrooms) • Most professional athletes are at least seven feet tall • Hologram (augmented reality) phone calls and computer interfaces • Knowledge implanted directly into the brain • Viewing live sports via virtual reality • Search (like Google) in your own head/mind • Cancer is cured; also no more wisdom teeth • No more human military soldiers • Dogs will speak • Shoes will hover

As for me in my field concerning games, media, and social media: One thing we can count on in technology is that computing power, digital storage, and connectivity tend to increase exponentially. So when we think about what will happen in a few years, we don’t double our estimates of how fast our computers and phones are, we square them, at least.

Given that, I think we can expect great advancements in display technologies such as screens and augmented reality. The popularity of Pokémon Go! was a peek into the future of augmented reality and gaming entering real spaces instead of just living on screens. The flexibility of display technology will allow this to happen with more regularity, and will continue to pull game players into different spaces.

Dr. Boyan, a member of the Albion faculty since 2009, received his B.A. and M.A. from Washington State University and his Ph.D. from Michigan State University.

His research explores digital game mechanics and learning outcomes.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 25

Carving Out Knowledge FOR DECADES, THE COLLEGE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT IT HAD.

Recently rediscovered within the Albion College collections, this roughly two-foot-long wood object has been authenticated as an Ahayuda, a war god of the Zuni Nation. It is shown here in a horizontal orientation, with the head and face on the left.

26 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

H. CONWAY PHOTO

TODAY, A CULTURAL CONNECTION IS FORMING.

Art, art history, anthropology, and religious studies come together as a student and professor uncover the backstory of a mostly forgotten Native American artifact—and begin proceedings for repatriation.

By Chuck Carlson For Chelsea Adams, ’17, it has been a journey of wonder and magic, of self-awareness and self-confidence.

And it’s been a trek into places and cultures she never imagined she’d go.

“It’s more than I ever thought I could learn about one object,” she says.

That one object came into her life a little more than a year ago, unsolicited and unexpected, and since then she has learned as much about herself as she has about an artifact that few at the College even knew existed.

The artifact is a little more than two feet long, with sharp facial features still visible despite decades of weathering. It has its hands on its hips and a prominent hole in its stomach that likely held a carved, corkscrew-shaped umbilical cord, possibly symbolizing fertility.

Adams knows it’s old—probably from the 19th century—and she knows it holds significance to the lives and culture of a Native American group in ways she will never understand.

A Livonia native who originally was going to major in chemistry before switching to anthropology and religious studies, Adams has analyzed and measured every part of the object, from its length and breadth to its various markings to the size and depth of the cracks that cover it.

She has researched it backward and forward, learning it was more than likely carved from a cottonwood tree, and one that, according to tradition, had been struck by lightning, thus imbuing it with increased power.

She knows it’s called an Ahayuda, a powerful war god of the Zuni Nation, a Native American people who have resided in the Southwest for centuries. She also knows that, as much as she’s learned about it in the past year, she will never know enough.

“I want to know everything about it but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she says. “I realize how much potential it has.”

Delving Into the Past Adams took on the role as student researcher at the request of professor of art history Bille Wickre, who found the artifact deep in the recesses of the basement vault inside the Bobbitt Visual Arts Center. For both of them, it has been a strange, eyeopening, and sometimes frustrating journey in which it seems every answer has led to three more questions.

Where did the Ahayuda come from?

Who found it? And how and why did it end up at, of all places, a small liberal arts college in Michigan?

Where does it go from here?

Most important, perhaps: what secrets does it still hold?

“I am curious about the age but it shouldn’t make a drastic difference,” Adams says. “It’s still sacred.”

Indeed, Ahayuda may be the most sacred of objects for the Zuni, who for nearly 40 years have been trying to reclaim their sacred objects from museums, institutions, and other collections in the U.S. and Europe.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 27

Art history professor Bille Wickre (far left), pictured with other items from the College’s collection of Native American art, says the Zuni artifact project, which includes key research contributions from Chelsea Adams, ’17 (left), has “been a transformative experience.”

Still, for Adams and Wickre, the journey has been the best part. “This has been a much larger experience than I ever expected, but it’s also been a learning experience,” Wickre says.

“More than that, it’s been a transformative experience and has taught me the place of sacred objects in Native American culture.”

Today, Wickre and Adams, with help from the College administration, are trying to get the war god back in the hands of the Zuni—not only because it’s the right thing to do but because, since 1990, it is also a federal law.

Aimed at entities receiving federal funding, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed by Congress to ensure that Native American cultural items—everything from human remains to funerary and other sacred objects— are returned to the tribes from which they originated. To date, hundreds of items have been repatriated.

Returning the Ahayuda to the Zuni has been a slow process. But soon, possibly by spring, it should be back where it is supposed to be. And it will be an event neither Wickre nor Adams will likely forget.

Experiencing a ‘Wow’ Moment Wickre unknowingly began on this path about four years ago, when she decided she was going to teach a course on Native American art. Seeking a way to enhance the course, she learned of a collector of Native American art in Ann Arbor, Richard Pohrt, and asked if he’d like to look through the College’s collection of artifacts and, perhaps, talk to her class about the topic.

28 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

“Of course I jumped on it,” Pohrt recalls. “And in the course of looking at [the collection] I spotted the Zuni war god. I mentioned to Bille what it was and its significance. It’s not the type of thing that would necessarily be recognized by anyone not versed in the subject.

And Wickre has been impressed: “Chelsea has done an amazing job with this. “She’s done exactly what a museum curator would have done.”

“This is the last thing I expected to see,” he adds. “It was kind of a ‘wow’ moment in this modest collection at Albion College.”

Still, the same questions loom. Where did it come from? How did it end up at Albion? And, perhaps most important, what is its future?

That’s when Wickre began to learn about the idol, which the College has had in its collection since 1973 but never really knew of its significance. “This whole study of American Indian art is pretty new to me,” Wickre says.

“It’s a plunge into the deep end for me.”

Wickre and Adams know this much.

So she brought in Adams as her research assistant. “I’ve always had a thing for antiques and old things,” says Adams, who is looking for a career in museum work.

She began researching the idol in 2015, even receiving a Foundation for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Activity grant from the College last summer. She continued to work on it during the fall semester and plans to make it part of her senior thesis as well as an Elkin R. Isaac Student Research Symposium presentation in the spring.

For Adams, it has been the perfect project to confirm in her mind that she’s on the right career track. “I’ve learned I could be a lot more professional with artifacts than I thought,” she says. “It’s made me more confident.”

Finding Some Answers

The carving of Ahayuda goes back centuries to the Zuni Nation that has lived predominantly in what is now New Mexico.

Two idols, one symbolizing the village’s Bear Clan and the other the Deer Clan, are carved each year by the tribe’s Bow priests as the winter solstice approaches. They are then placed on the village’s altar on the winter solstice and left there for a year to watch over the village and absorb negative energy.

After a year, the idols are removed, taken to a specially constructed shrine and placed there to naturally degrade, with the power it absorbed over the year seeping into the earth.

“You might describe them as a highly stylized representation of the human figure,” says Pohrt, who has been collecting Native American artifacts for more than 40 years and estimates the war god currently in the College’s possession was probably carved in the 19th century. “But to [the Zuni] it represents their god. They look at them as guardians of their universe.”

They are never to be removed from where they’re placed, but over the years visitors have taken them as souvenirs, more likely than not with no knowledge of their importance to the Zuni.

And that’s how one of these idols apparently ended up at Albion. “I’m incredibly curious about this item,” Wickre says. “It’s been living with us for over 40 years.”

Charting a Timeline Though the details remain sketchy about Albion’s history with the artifact, Wickre says it was donated by an alumnus in 1973. As is standard practice with such donations, she says, the name of the family who donated the item is confidential.

As to its authenticity, Wickre sent a photo of it to elders at the Zuni Pueblo last year and it was confirmed to be authentic. That was also the time that tribe officials made it clear they would like to have it back.

The College has since filed an “Intent to Repatriate” with the federal government in hopes of having an official ceremony in Albion.

Plans are evolving for a Zuni Bow priest and tribal elder to come to campus in the spring for a two-day visit in which the Ahayuda will be formally returned. Wickre also hopes there will be an opportunity for the elders to hold a special seminar for students about the process while they’re here.

In the meantime, there is more research to be done. But Wickre and Adams realize there will always be some mystery swirling around the artifact and, as far as they’re concerned, maybe that’s the way it should be.

The goal now is to get it back where it belongs under the best circumstances possible.

“For the Zuni, it will restore a harmony to their people,” Wickre says. “And that’s incredibly important.”

Proving Provenance URN IN STOCKWELL, PART OF VANN COLLECTION, COULD BE OF MAYAN ORIGIN. For the past couple of years, perhaps longer, a clay urn sat all but unnoticed in a glass case in the reference area of StockwellMudd Library. Not especially colorful nor impressive, it probably was passed by students every day who would take a cursory glance, never giving it a second thought.

Justin Seidler, the college’s archivist and special collections librarian, laughs. “It’s been hiding in plain sight,” he says. “I’m sure it could have easily been mistaken for a student project.”

But it was always a little more than that.

In fact, the piece, which resided in a lessthan-impregnable display case, is believed to be a valuable and important part of Mexican history. Brought to the College by Marvin Vann, ’40, the urn is believed to be a Mayan earth lord that could be at least 500 years old, if confirmed by research.

Vann, who died in 2004, spent years as an amateur archeologist with a special interest in the Mayan civilization in Mexico. He made dozens of trips to the region in a 30-year period up to 1993. In 1999, he donated his collection of films, slides, artifacts, photos, maps, and notes to the College. Included in the gift was the urn that eventually found its place in the library.

Soon, it caught the attention of longtime anthropology professor Elizabeth Brumfiel.

She contacted Joel Palka, a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago who specializes in Mayan culture and has since been intrigued by the urn for years.

“There were a lot of photos and slides and Super 8 film from the 1960s,” Palka says. “I was interested.”

So interested, in fact, that Palka has come to Albion several times to study the urn. Last spring, he brought several of his students with him to take samples to confirm its age and authenticity.

But Palka is already convinced it’s authentic because he has seen its twin, which is on display at the Museo de los Altos in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. “It’s identical to the one in Chiapas,” he says. “I call it a clone.”

Palka explains that the urn was a Mayan symbol of the mountain. It also could have been a receptacle for human bones, another Mayan tradition. He is awaiting approval of his research request to the museum in Mexico for an urn sample, which would offer definitive proof of the authenticity of Albion’s urn, now in safe keeping in the library’s special collections research room. Plans are being considered for its repatriation to Mexico, so it can be reunited with its twin. –Chuck Carlson

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 29

Doug Armstrong, ’88, CEO and founder of North Star Reach.

30 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

ALWAYS WITHIN HIS REACH Through mountains of fundraising and valleys of logistics, an alumnus completes his quest to open a special camp for children.

It could be said that North Star Reach is a dream come true for Doug Armstrong, ’88, but more accurately it’s the result of an impossible task undertaken by an unstoppable worker.

On top of his demanding career as director of clinical research for the University of Michigan Health System’s (UMHS) Transplant Center, Armstrong spent many years, without pay, setting up and tearing down a temporary one-week camp for children with organ transplants. Then, after spearheading a successful 18-month campaign to acquire property just west of Pinckney from the University of Michigan, he walked away from his job to become CEO of North Star Reach, overseeing

the design, funding, and construction of a free summer camp for children living with serious and chronic medical issues.

Guys; the project will serve as an entire episode of The Treehouse Guys airing in 2017.

Ten years and more than $26 million later, the newly opened North Star Reach hosted 200 kids this past summer in three different camps for children with organ transplants, heart defects, and blood disorders. The camp also hosted four family camp weekends this fall.

Armstrong also currently serves as volunteer assistant chief of two Washtenaw County fire departments.

Helping others, he says, “is at my core.”

He grew up in Ann Arbor and Albion, the son of Bobbie and Robert “Bob” Armstrong, professor emeritus of chemistry, and received the College’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 2013.

North Star Reach is one of nine U.S.-based camps affiliated with the SeriousFun Children’s Network founded by Paul Newman. A fully accessible treehouse at the camp was built with the DIY Network’s Treehouse

Around 1998, I was talking with a family in the Transplant Center clinic and mentioned summer camp. They kind of looked at their shoes and explained that because of the medications and monitoring their son needed daily, no camps would accept him. I went to church camp, Boy Scout camp, and Morley Fraser’s Summer Adventure camp, and I knew what value I got from those experiences.

If anybody needs to go to camp, it’s these kids who’ve been cheated out of their childhood.

Our first camp was taking a van full of kids to a liver transplant camp outside Pittsburgh. The campers put

Armstrong, who lives with his family in Dexter, recently spoke with Io Triumphe! writer Jake Weber about his efforts in opening North Star Reach and traces that long road, in his own words, below.

their swimsuits on and realized that everybody in the pool had a scar. These kids are used to this being a selfimage problem and here they were, surrounded by kids who had “their” scar. That brought it to me, the power of camp and these kids feeling normal for the first time.

For eight years, we were able to use a YMCA camp in Oscoda for one week each summer. We had to borrow a trailer full of equipment from a bunch of different facilities, and if a camper got sick, that was a four-hour trip back to Ann Arbor. Wheelchairs had to be carried up and down stairs and couldn’t go in the sand.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 31

Scenes from camp, including Armstrong using his head in the North Star Reach dining hall (above).

UMHS gave $3 million of its budget back to the university for the [Pinckney] property. The head of UMHS told me, “Go form a nonprofit and we’ll lease you the property for a dollar a year.” So I left a very successful career. I knew if I walked away from camp, it wouldn’t happen.

A lot of people thought I was crazy.

Not Just for the Kids

Our doctors and nurses are out in camp interacting with children in activity areas, so kids can have minimal interruption of their activities. In the dining hall, nurses come around with medications. As kids get tucked into bed, they get tube feeds or breathing treatments. We can do dialysis, chemotherapy, infusions—all to push the envelope to get kids into camp who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity.

We have an amazing health center, but in some ways we built this for the parents. You can imagine, it’s a big leap of faith. Many of these parents have never been separated from their children, other than when their kids are hospitalized. And we never ask any families to pay anything. Many of our families have one parent who stops work to care for a sick child, and all of them have big medical expenses. It costs about $2,500 for each child who attends

32 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

camp, and we get that all from outside donors and sponsors.

We have a lot of volunteer clinicians, and camp gives them a new perspective. Seeing their patients performing on stage or chasing their doctors with a squirt gun can be a new understanding of the disease state and residual effects. Sometimes “fine” is only measured by the child going back to school, and clinicians need to remember there’s more to “fine” than that.

I’ve also seen clinicians struggle to draw 0.15 ml of a liquid medication, and they tell me, “I’m never going to prescribe that dose again!” This

process can make them better clinicians and inspire them to do better work.

A Sense of Accomplishment

GAME CHANGER

The other day, I was interviewed by a camper who asked me about a time when I thought about quitting. I couldn’t think of anything because I couldn’t imagine not being successful. I knew I’d have times when I would fail and be told ‘no,’ but not that I would quit.

I call camp my ‘guilty pleasure.’ I’m not there for me, but you can’t separate yourself from the fulfillment you get from interacting with these kids and seeing the pure joy and sense of accomplishment they get from being in camp.

As I’ve gone down this journey, I’ve often joked with people and said nothing I did in my formal education prepared me for this. When I step back, though, I have to say that everything I did at Albion prepared me to be successful—from finding good mentors, to using resources that were available, and drawing from my experiences. None of what I did at Albion trained me to raise money, design camp buildings, or work with a board of directors, but it gave me the confidence that I could figure it out and I could put pieces in place to keep taking steps toward a goal.

I’m at a really great stage in my life where I’m happy to get up every day knowing that we are changing children’s lives, one camper at a time.

For more information about North Star Reach, visit northstarreach.org.

SPECIAL SPECTATORS PHOTO

Our needs assessment shows that there are thousands of kids in the Great Lakes region who need this experience. I can’t wait until we’re full every week of the summer and we’re full every fall and spring weekend.

his Albion graduation (“I met incredibly inspiring kids and quickly learned how much they loved sports”), began to re-examine his life. In 2002, he created the nonprofit Special Spectators, which hosts VIP, all-access, gameday experiences for seriously ill children and their families at sporting events across the U.S. Now going on 15 years, the organization has served nearly 9,500 patients, parents, and siblings at more than 370 games, primarily college football. Plans are in motion to feature more sports, across all seasons.

More than 40 years ago, Blake Rockwell, ’89, lost his older brother during a second openheart surgery that sought to fix a congenital defect. Charles was just 10 years old.

Fast-forward to 2001: a pair of colleagues lost on 9/11 in New York, followed a couple of weeks later by the passing of a close friend in Chicago, to cancer, in her early 30s.

Rockwell, who had volunteered at his brother’s hospital in Chicago not long after

“I knew we could create big, beautiful smiles, but I don’t know if I ever expected how much it would mean to these families,” says Rockwell, still based in New York as an independent small business consultant focusing on start-up and early-stage companies. “They are incredibly thankful for the six or seven hours they can go out as a family, put all their concerns behind them, and enjoy a sense of normalcy.”

Learn more at specialspectators.org.

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HOUSEM

THE

The College’s reimagining of Munger Place into a group-project-based, living-learning community inspires 10 alumni to share their own living-learning story over one lifechanging semester together more than 40 years ago on East Erie Street.

AT E S O

In the fall of 1973, nine Albion College seniors and a recent graduate moved into a duplex on East Erie Street to participate in a unique student-designed, living-learning experiment.

Little did they know at the time that the endeavor would not only prove to be successful but also bind them together for life.

F 1213 4 cchioni, ’7

By Dan Ve

Some friendships do not last, but some friends are more loyal than brothers. —Proverbs 18:24

Context of the Times

The Basic Idea

To paraphrase Bob Dylan, the times they still were a-changing in the early 1970s. The cultural revolution that started a decade earlier continued to smolder and take aim at many of the country’s long-standing institutions.

During this time, Albion College offered an interdisciplinary course for incoming freshmen called Basic Ideas (BI). The twosemester course brought together professors from various disciplines to teach classes with a maximum of 15 students. The first semester focused on Self and Society, the second on Science and Values.

“The war in Vietnam was seriously dividing the country and also the Albion College student population,” remembers Lisa (Friedrichs) Olson, ’74, one of the students who took part in the livinglearning arrangement. “Many young men were in college only to avoid the draft, as that gave them a student deferment, or a few years of ‘safety.’

Students didn’t trust ‘The Establishment’— parents, the administration, politicians, national and local leaders, government—in fact, just about everyone over 30.”

Traditionally conservative Albion College grappled with changing social standards and gender roles.

“Albion did have some co-ed dorms, but the genders were relatively separated,” Lisa notes.

“The freshman and sophomore women were way on one edge of campus, and freshmen women had curfews. In fact, one of the charming customs was that if a woman’s date got her back to the dorm late, she accumulated ‘late minutes’—not a good thing—and he had to give her roses to compensate.

“Relationships between young men and women were more commonly of the dating variety, versus friendships,” Lisa continues.

“So the idea of a men-women common living situation was much more radical to Albion at that time than it would be today.”

“The class time,” recalls Bill Minnich, ’72, who served as resident assistant in the Erie duplex, “involved a great deal of sharing of things of very personal nature. Hence, many of the classes established very close bonds.”

From this experience, several students who had attended BI together in 1970-71 began to discuss the possibility of extending their BI experience.

“The idea started in sophomore year, when a few students who were taking a sociology class right before lunch would walk to Baldwin and continue carrying on discussions from that day’s class over lunch,” Lisa says. “This took the topics out of the classroom and into our lives. It was a mixed group, guys and gals, and the topics were intellectual—discussions, debates. Some of us wanted to continue that experience—to make learning concepts more relevant and useful, beyond just exams and grades.

“We also started thinking about ‘the world,” she adds. “Going out on our own, getting jobs, having our own apartment or house, having relationships, getting married, just transitions in general from the classroom environment we had been in since we were 5 years old.

We wanted to

develop an environment and situation where seniors could be exploring those transitions in a practical way in their final year at Albion.”

The seed was planted and started to take root.

“As the sophomore year moved along,” Bill notes, “a concept began to gel in which a structured course might be created that could incorporate continued study of some of the issues addressed in Basic Ideas, in conjunction with a housing arrangement in which the participants could live together in a selfcontained facility, enabling them to put the study concepts to practical test.

“Moving into their junior year,” he says, “and after much conferring with some faculty members, a course outline and proposal were drafted and presented to the College administration, representing it as a ‘livinglearning seminar.’”

The Idea’s Evolution Work had to be done to flesh out the course before the administration would approve it.

“The seminar was conceived as a senior BI class, which would draw together the previous three years’ experiences and evaluate issues that had been brought up in other classes,” says Sally Taber, ’74, a course participant who also helped develop the proposal. “Other areas the group was interested in exploring were humanistic psychology, interpersonal communication, and group dynamics.”

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 35

The Numbers Game

“A team-research model was proposed,” Sally explains, “in which a problem would be defined with the help of a professor who knew something of that area. Several people would do research on various aspects of the problem and then present their findings to the group as the basis for discussion, which would be more productive than a discussion based on people’s opinions.”

Also, the group felt that having the participants reside in a common living unit would encourage further educational opportunities.

“It was based on members’ experiences of significant learning experiences that took place outside of a classroom,” Sally says. “It was also felt that a lot more learning through discussion and interaction would take place if the group lived together.”

The proposed course settled on two purposes: one, the integration of learning by examining topics or problems from different perspectives in various disciplines, and two, the formation of an environment where participants would be bound together by shared decision-making, cooking, and cleaning responsibilities.

For the course to receive administrative approval, a faculty advisor was needed.

Johan Stohl, a religion professor who was involved in the BI program, volunteered. And so the proposed course became Religious Studies 381: Values and Value Theory, or, as it was more affectionately known by the participants, “the senior seminar.”

Commune vs. Community Despite the support from various faculty members, the students still faced an uphill battle with the administration.

36 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

“The thing that I clearly remember was hanging up on [Dean of Students Charles] Leeds one evening when he called to tell me that this might not work out,” Sally recalls.

“I can’t remember what the issue was, but I was pretty upset.”

Part of the problem was having both male and female students living together.

“I think that ‘commune’ could be used to express the worry of the powers that be,” says resident Meg (Dawe) Minnich, ’74. “I seem to remember that word being used in conversations with Leeds or [Director of Residence Life Jack] Goodnow. It definitely was used by more conservative members of my family. Unrelated men and women living together in one house had to mean only one thing.”

The course proposal was revised to address the issue.

“A live-in advisor, an alumnus, would be enlisted to serve as a liaison to the College, to serve as a ‘responsible party,’ much as a ‘house mother’ might have in the case of the fraternity houses,” Bill notes. “Late in the junior year, after much back-and-forth gnashing of teeth, the proposal was accepted.”

With the course approved for that fall, the student organizers still had a couple of tasks to complete before their junior year ended. First on the list: recruit enough students to enroll in the course. So they started “selling” it to other students they knew.

“This group had many interconnections, starting from freshman year,” remembers resident Theresa Skrivseth, ’74. “We women lived on Three West (the third floor of West Hall). We quickly learned that we had all requested nonsmoking roommates. I know many in the group were in Basic Ideas together and had a really good experience.

“Then there was Celebrate Life,” continues Theresa, referring to a Sunday afternoon discussion group partly intended as a substitute for attending church service. “Frank [Pysz, ’74] and Sally were strong members of that group. I was more of a devoted hangeron. I think some of the rest of the group came from time to time. We did go on several retreats together. I feel that may have influenced the comfort level with the idea of ‘living together.’”

Before their junior year ended, nine students committed to the course. In addition to Lisa,

The administration offered a College-owned house on East Erie Street to serve as the residence for the course. It was a duplex and would satisfy the need for the separation of living quarters for male and female students.

There was one exception. Bill, who had been approved to serve as resident assistant, and Meg, one of the seniors-to-be, were already engaged to be married in late summer prior to the start of the fall semester. They would share a room wherever it worked out best, which turned out to be the women’s side of the house.

12 ER 13 IE EA ST ST .

The group met with various faculty members to discuss concepts for the course.

“My original purpose in joining ... I was starting to wonder if I would starve if I had to eat one more year of the dorm food. To this day, I cannot face Jell-O.” —Theresa Skrivseth, ’74

The Educational Experience The course may have involved a house, students who lived together, money management, and more. But at its basic level, it was a course like any other, offered for academic credit.

B

D R. IL ST L O M ,A H E G N L, D

“We had to convince the College that this had an education/learning component, and that it wasn’t just a radical hippie environment,” Lisa says. “We also had to develop a syllabus, as well as how participation would be measured.”

Lisa remembers the proximity of the train tracks just across the street from the house and “trying to have the serious classroom group discussions with our professor and having to periodically just stop talking while the train went by.”

The students who developed the course proposal had considered and discarded various ideas for the course’s educational component.

One theme that was brought up but later dropped was “Survival in Urban America.” Still, while not a conscious choice, a kind of survival did factor into the living component.

Two students were identified every week to plan meals, buy groceries (luckily, one of the students had a car), and prepare dinners.

Because of varying class schedules, the participants ate breakfast and lunch on their own with the food that was available. Dinner was prepared to be eaten together.

The group’s male students may not have been used to cooking and cleaning. After all, Meg says, they had been raised in homes where “men made the money and took care of the lawn and bills, and women handled everything to do with the house, meals, and kids. How many of our fathers cooked or cleaned?”

While not a classic war of the sexes, there were some battles. “Gender roles were entrenched, which led to some confrontations about sharing household workloads,” Lisa recalls. “But it also was a great environment to establish cross-gender friend relationships, without the stress or formality of dating.”

At its core, the experience undoubtedly provided lessons in everyday living.

LL Y

The College agreed that the board money would be deposited into a checking account that would be managed by the students.

Theresa and Grant were nominated to handle the account, with Bill as the College representative providing oversight.

“I do not remember much of the course work, only that it was rigorous—naturally, as Johan Stohl was the professor,” Theresa notes. “I was interested in the course as it developed— and, yes, it was work. So much so, that I had misallocated my time that term and had to drop what I originally thought would be a ‘for fun’ course in English literature. We all had to work at the academic side of the seminar—it was not an ‘easy A’ course.”

“We had kaper charts for cooking and cleanup,” Meg recalls. “Sally and I were fresh from a summer as Girl Scout camp counselors, so who did what, when, was fresh in our minds.”

SA

“In advance of moving in that fall, we had to coordinate who was bringing which types of dishes, pans, and various household items,” Lisa notes. “Then came the logistics—each student’s room and board money would go towards the house.”

The syllabus for Values and Value Theory, subtitled “In Relation to Life-World and Social Institutions,” encompassed eight single-spaced pages. It covered the objectives, student requirements, the faculty advisor’s role, the course outline, and a bibliography of books and articles. It also defined the class format: two 90-minute sessions each week.

DA N

Sally, Meg, Theresa and Frank, they were Fred Fuller, ’74, Grant Stokoe, ’74, Dan Vecchioni, ’74, and Tim Wilson, ’74. But a few issues still needed to be resolved before the students could break for the summer.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 37

Sharing Is Caring The following students enrolled in Religious Studies 381: Values and Value Theory in Fall 1973.

Fred Fuller, ’74, English major Meg (Dawe) Minnich, ’74, psychology Lisa (Friedrichs) Olson, ’74, home economics Frank Pysz, ’74, religion Theresa Skrivseth, ’74, political science and Russian studies Grant Stokoe, ’74, mathematics Sally Taber, ’74, group dynamics and education Dan Vecchioni, ’74, English and sociology Tim Wilson, ’74, sociology and religion Dr. Johan Stohl served as professor for the twice-weekly, 90-minute class. Bill Minnich, ’72, served as resident assistant in the “classroom,” 1213 E. Erie St.

“Definitely the budget, meal planning, cooking, and cleaning were urban survival, as was trying to manage the external demands of things like other classes, Greek involvement for a few of us, and part-time jobs,” Sally notes.

“It wasn’t like we really could be in a cocoon, even if people didn’t want to associate with us ‘hippies.’ The other intriguing idea was of us attempting to influence or control our environment, instead of the other way around.”

Expecting the Unexpected Naturally, surprises sprung up along the way.

“Lisa, Sally, Theresa, and I had spent the summer working at the College and housesitting Johan and Donna [Stohl]’s house,” Meg recalls. “They returned from Europe before school started, and we had arranged to move into the [Erie Street] house early.

“However, when the College staff went in to prepare the house, they were swarmed by fleas and had to make a hasty exit,” Meg continues.

“Needless to say, there was a scramble to find us a place to live while 1213 was fumigated, and they finally gave us an apartment in Burns Street married student housing. There was some question whether we were going to be able to get into the house on time because the infestation was so bad.”

Once everyone did move in and the semester started, Lisa remembers “going to the grocery store to buy food for the group, and having one of the team open a package of cookies and actually

38 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

Then and now: At left, the housemates pause for a photo before heading to a late-semester formal dinner at Schuler’s in Marshall (top row from left: Dan, Grant, Tim, and Bill; bottom row from left: Frank, Theresa, Sally, and Meg; not pictured: Fred and Lisa). At right, “giving new meaning to senior seminar,” according to Dan, in 2014 (from left: Tim, Sally, Frank, Theresa, Lisa, Bill, and Dan; not pictured: Meg, Fred, and Grant).

eat some of them before going to the checkout counter. This was unheard of in my family, and somewhat embarrassing to have to bring the opened package to be rung up for sale.”

Theresa also recalls the “the dreadful sessions with what the CDC refers to as ‘food-borne illness.’” Or, “to put it more simply: when washing dishes by hand at the sink, use scalding water and soap or suffer the consequences.”

While the students were taking strides to becoming adults, they also periodically lapsed into childlike behavior. On more than one occasion, such behavior involved “spur-of-themoment, wild rubber-band fights,” notes Lisa.

“This involved an armory of rubber bands; people hiding behind furniture, walls, and doors; and popping out to shoot. Perhaps it was a precursor to paintball?”

Sometimes an impromptu bridge game would take precedence over studies. Frank, Dan, Tim, Grant, and Theresa all knew how to play and would even manage multiple hands if a foursome wasn’t present.

Then, of course, there was the tale of the toilet—the one not in a bathroom.

“There was a toilet on the men’s side that was out of order when we moved in,” Bill says. “The [College] said they would have the old toilet taken out and replaced. The old toilet was removed and a new toilet brought in, but only as far as the base of the stairway, in the living room, where it remained for several weeks. It

served as an auxiliary seat during our meeting times. A couple of the guys seemed to vie for it each time.”

Bill also remembers a revelation the administration experienced at semester’s end.

But first, he backs up to provide context.

“When we received approval for our proposal, and were assigned a duplex house to use, we looked at the house and saw that the adjoining living rooms were divided by a wall,” he says.

“We immediately told them that we’d need to have the living room opened up in order to be able to meet together for class purposes. We told them that we could do the work and could replace the wall when the semester ended.

With consternation, they agreed to it.

“At the end of the semester, they arranged for a walk-through with us, to see that we had done as we said—which we had—and to check the overall condition of the house,” Bill continues. “They looked at our work in rebuilding the wall, then proceeded upstairs through the men’s bedroom side. They seemed satisfied with everything.

“As we worked our way to the back, I—as the ‘responsible party’—led them into and through a set of back-to-back closets that had had the dividing wall removed prior to our occupancy, leading into the women’s side. We had to duck our heads to get through it, and I thought nothing of it until I got through and looked back at Jack Goodnow, who looked dumbstruck that the bedroom levels were actually connected.

It was nothing we had done, and he had

“We are all still friends. We get together. We communicate.

What else is there? I have kept in touch with that group more than with any others.” —Lisa (Friedrichs) Olson, ’74

been completely unaware of it. But the look on his face was priceless, and he was mostly speechless. What was there to be said? We’d done nothing wrong.”

The Takeaways After years of effort to create the course, Values and Value Theory only lasted one semester.

Three of the participating students graduated midyear. Yet, the four-month experience produced lifelong bonds.

“Was it a success?” Lisa asks. “We were able to get the house established, to get the professor advisor, to get college credit, and to balance it with our other demands at Albion.”

There were other ways to define success as well.

“Coming from southeastern Michigan to a small conservative college in central southern Michigan, it was enlightening to see how people think about things differently and sometimes have very strong convictions,” Lisa recalls. “It was a chance to learn the daily responsibilities and challenges in having other obligations in one’s life beyond school. We did become responsible for ensuring our own welfare. We did become a community.”

Meg says the experience of having to convince the administration to approve the course made an impact on her. “The first reactions we got from the administration were uniformly negative, and the faculty’s reactions weren’t much better. But we didn’t take no for an answer.”

Theresa offers another insight. “Your career or work is not as important as successful, longterm relationships,” she says. “On the other hand, it is highly specific to the individual what defines ‘success.’ So, work hard on your relationships, but be aware that some will not last as long as you want.”

Tim remembers a particular lesson he learned during a week when he was tasked with cooking for the group. “I was assigned as head cook to

bake pumpkin bread and use the [old Halloween] jack-o’-lantern to do so,” he says. “It changed my life. I baked pumpkin bread for friends and family for 30 years after that, although I shifted to canned pumpkin immediately.”

The Seminar Letter According to Bill, “as the formal experience came to an end, the group expressed a commitment to remain in each other’s lives in active and supportive ways.

“In the first 20 years or so after graduating,” he says, “in addition to planning reunions, we also circulated a packet of handwritten or typewritten personal letters—‘the seminar letter’—in which we updated each other on significant happenings in our lives, and posed questions and issues that we wished to discuss as a group.

“This packet would typically take anywhere from six months to a year to make a full circuit,” Bill explains, “at which time each of us would remove our previous letter and write a new one to include before sending it on again.”

By the mid-1990s, the snail-mail packet became an email group and contact was much more efficient. There are still periodic reunions—sometimes at Albion, sometimes at people’s homes.

“Bellemont Manor was used more than once, since we could occupy it as a group, and there was the great sunporch where we could sit and talk,” Lisa says. “We would catch up, reminisce, take and share pictures, and still have those rubber-band fights!”

Trustworthy friends are a strong shelter; whoever finds one has found a treasure.

– Sirach 6:14 Dan Vecchioni recently retired as managing editor, employee communication, at DTE Energy in Detroit.

More on Munger Place Owned by the College since 2003, the building at 301 E. Michigan Ave. (at Monroe Street), which originally opened in 1926 as The Parker Inn, was refurbished earlier this year following a major gift from Gary, ’57, and Peggy Noble. It reopened this fall as a living-learning community (LLC) where as many as five groups of up to 10 students each from diverse backgrounds and interests will live and study together, work on a collaborative project, and then bring their disparate ideas back into the College community.

Munger’s first LLC, the Wendell Berry House, named for the American writer and environmental activist, is made up of six students currently exploring food and sustainability issues; Dr. Tim Lincoln, professor of geology and director of the College’s Center for Sustainability and the Environment, is the group’s advisor.

The application (which includes a group project proposal) and selection process for 2017-18 LLCs will conclude in early February.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 39

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION NEWS

HOMECOMING 2016 Warm fall weather matched the warmth on and around campus October 14-15. Alumni toasted reunions and lifelong friendships and helped celebrate several new facilities, including one that gives the College an official downtown presence. The football team came up short vs. Olivet, but the festivities lasted long into the night. Find more Homecoming photos at www.flickr. com/albioncollege, and we’ll do this again October 20-21, 2017. Save the dates!

MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF 1966 GATHERED FOR A 50TH REUNION PRE-DINNER PHOTO. Class attendees included, in alphabetical order, Penny Worn Boozman, Sharon Parsons Chace, Sharon Schalliol Crawford, Mary Latimer Dalzell, Fazli Datoo, Jim Dean, Mary Neller DeRidder, Sue Mortimer Fehniger, Virginia Amrein Fergueson, John Fergueson, Shirley Tucker Geggie, Thomas Geggie, Sally McCullough Green, Barbara Glocksine Hansen, Carole Kielsmeier Harsh, Paul Hartman, William Hubble, Robert Hyatt, Nancy Weaver Jones, Sarah Keys, Carolyn Nickel Kibler, Robert Krumm, Lucy Langworthy Larsen, Susan Hocking March, Janet McCrea Mathews, Ted McClew, Peter Miller, Sandy Walsh Moliere, John Muenzer, Wildred Neller, Brenda Shear O’Connor, Doug Packard, Judy Lemon Packard, Ann Herrold Peterson, Mary Anne Rankin, John Rankin, Holly Burnette Richter, Gary Rifenberg, Dick Ritter, Bill Rivers, Janet Cesario Rivers, Maryetta Andrews Sachs, Margery Taber Schleicher, Kalmin Smith, Harry Taylor, Jean Klein Usner, Sheran Payne Wallis, Joanne Shutt Weiss, and Marcia Sims Wittenberg.

1. Trustee Tom Ludington, ’76 (second from left), cut the ribbon on The Ludington Center at 101 N. Superior St. He was accompanied

by Board of Trustees Chair Don Sheets, ’82 (left), President Mauri Ditzler, and trustee Sam Shaheen, ’88.

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2. Randi Heathman, ’03, spoke during a ceremony celebrating the opening of the newly expanded Randi C. Heathman Indoor Arena at the Nancy G. Held Equestrian Center.

3. A long dormant space in Olin Hall newly revitalized as the Young Greenhouse and Marilyn Young Vitek, ’56, Atrium Study Lounge welcomed its first guests.

Learn more: albion.edu/news/ludington-center albion.edu/news/equestrian-arena albion.edu/giving/vitek-atrium 1

40 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

3

BACK TO CLASS

MEETING SPOTS

Join Albion College alumni, faculty, staff, and friends for academics and fun—no term papers here!

SATURDAY, MARCH 4 Back to Class: Southwest Florida FRIDAY, JULY 14 Back to Class: Bay View/ Petoskey, Michigan

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Details, including class information, will be available soon.

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Visit albion.edu/alumni/events for more about upcoming alumni events.

New to the Team The Albion College Alumni Association Board of Directors recently welcomed several members.

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Rev. Susan Cowles Bowman, ’61 Alliance, OH

Bobbie Cole, ’07 Raleigh, NC

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1. In Boston, at Fenway Park for a Tigers-Red Sox game 2. In Chicago, at AceBounce Ping-Pong® Bar and Restaurant Robert Lee, ’64 Goodyear, AZ

Jill LePla Neuville, ’69 Washington, DC

Matthew Randazzo, ’00 Southlake, TX

George Ristow, ’65 Lakewood Ranch, FL

Rabbi Arnold Sleutelberg, ’80 Troy, MI

More information about the board can be found at albion.edu/alumni/board.

3. In Virginia, on a tour of Blue Ridge Mountain breweries 4. In Wisconsin, Mark Thompson, ’91, and Tim Hummer, ’91, at New Glarus Brewing Company

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 41

Remembering President Mel Vulgamore His 14-year tenure during the ’80s and ’90s was marked, above all else, “by a total devotion to and passion for all things Albion.”

By Jake Weber Albion College’s 13th president, Dr. Melvin L. Vulgamore, passed away August 12, 2016 in New Hampshire at the age of 81. The last in an unbroken line of presidents who were also ordained ministers, Vulgamore graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University and Harvard Divinity School, and completed a doctorate at Boston University.

He is survived by his wife, Nan Oyer Vulgamore; daughters Allison Vulgamore of Philadelphia and Sarah Vulgamore of Lenox, Mass., and two grandchildren.

Placing a high priority on both the appearance and functionality of the campus’s living and working spaces, Vulgamore’s administration from 1983-97 saw the construction of the Dow Recreation and Wellness Center and the Kellogg Center. Additionally, Bobbitt Visual Arts Center, Goodrich Chapel, and Robinson and North halls were refurbished (North was renamed Vulgamore Hall in 1997), as were Wesley Hall, Seaton Hall, Stockwell Library, Kresge Gymnasium, and the Observatory, which became home to the Prentiss M. Brown Honors Program.

Former trustee Carolyn Aishton Ouderkirk, ’64, recalled that this concern for the physical plant led Vulgamore to address a problem that had plagued the community and the campus for many years. “Having been a student at Albion in the early 1960s, I remember, as I’m sure every other student at the time

remembers, the horrendously poor quality of the water in the town and at the College. It smelled and tasted of sulfur.”

Ouderkirk related that Vulgamore, along with then-Mayor Lois McClure-White, worked with a lobbyist to procure federal funding for a new well in Albion. “Talk about a major accomplishment,” Ouderkirk said. “Every water fountain and faucet at the College should have a plaque on it in Mel’s name.”

Vulgamore oversaw the institution of Albion’s First-Year Experience program, recognized nationally at the time as an innovative educational initiative. He co-founded Michigan Campus Compact (MiCC), an organization devoted to fostering civic engagement, service learning, and volunteering among college students.

Albion’s Sleight Leadership Program, established in the early 1990s, further strengthened Vulgamore’s commitment to a student body active in civic engagement; he also helped encourage then-Vice President George H.W. Bush and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to visit and address the campus.

And not a football Saturday went by where you couldn’t find President and Mrs. Vulgamore rooting on their beloved Britons.

“I think he had a rather big soft spot for our [1994] national champion football team,” said Megan Royle Carrella, ’95, “or maybe it was because the British Eighth used to let Nan know she looked ‘mah-velous.’”

Mel and Nan Vulgamore during 1989 Homecoming.

“What I loved most about President Vulgamore was his unmitigated joy at being surrounded by and involved with students,” said Carella. “He always took time to talk to students; he was genuinely interested in their lives and academic pursuits on campus.”

A longer version of this tribute can be found online at albion.edu/news/vulgamore. For more remembrances of President Vulgamore, please see page 52.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 51

ALBIONOTES

‘His Was a Very Keen Mind’ I remember him fondly as a deeply committed and visionary president of our college.

– Ted Everingham, ’61 Parents Weekend 1987, I had the honor of introducing Dr. Vulgamore and Nan (famous for her hats) to visiting families at a Goodrich Chapel program. He was so gracious. Thinking of his wife and family.

– Laura Blyth Poplawski, ’89

Dr. Melvin L. Vulgamore, Albion College’s 13th president (seen here in 1987 with Vice President George H.W. Bush), passed away August 12 (please see a tribute on page 51). Members of the Albion family are encouraged to share their memories of President Vulgamore by emailing communications@albion.edu. Several recollections are included below.

On October 5, 1996, my invocation at the fall meeting of Albion’s Board of Trustees concluded with the following words: “So as the search for a new president goes on, we would pray for Mel and Nan: • that they may see the fruits of their labors, • that they may know the joy of a work well done, • and that they have saved something of their best for last.

For if there be any who love Albion more, we don’t know who they are, or how it could be possible. So watch over them … over us … and over this college we hold dear.”

52 | Albion College Io Triumphe!

During a dozen years of serving the College, Mel and I became friends. We talked a little church and shared our affection for the theologian Paul Tillich. Mel created multiple opportunities for me to pray at Albion functions and supported Nan’s desire to assemble my prayers into a book. Together, Mel and Nan attended a surprise birthday party for my wife, Kris, and later hosted us in retirement.

When I needed a preacher to co-officiate at the wedding of my daughter, Julie, she said, “I wonder if Dr. Vulgamore would come?” “Of course we will,” they said. Only this time, Mel prayed.

– Rev. Dr. Bill Ritter, ’62, senior minister (retired), First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan

So sad to hear of his passing. Back on New Year’s Eve 1991, I was working the late shift at Campus Safety and Dr. Vulgamore came in with a tray of goodies for everyone working that night. So very kind and generous.

– Michelle Giordano, ’91 I was part of the Sleight Summer Leadership Academy in 2000.

As an English major with a concentration in Secondary Education, many of my classes were in Vulgamore Hall. I’m grateful for his legacy, and my thoughts are with his family.

– Julie Maxey Bell, ’04 Melvin Vulgamore must have been on the cusp of graduate school when the Class of 1961 arrived on campus in September 1957. A quarter of a century later, there he was as president of Albion College.

I was then religion editor of the Detroit Free Press. He sought me out, and I had the privilege of introducing him to our publisher.

I watched Mel charm him into having the newspaper pay more attention to the College. Six years

later I was honored by being named a Distinguished Alumnus, with President Vulgamore making a very complimentary presentation of the same. In due course I became a member of the Alumni Board. He never failed to show up for a time during our meetings to tell us of his next plan for Albion’s growth.

His was a very keen mind.

Because he and I were both philosophers, we spoke betimes the same language. When, in 1993, I was instrumental in bringing Archbishop Desmond Tutu to campus, President Vulgamore asked me to present the archbishop for investiture as a doctor of laws honoris causa.

Draped in my seldom-used academic regalia, there I stood between the archbishop and the president of my alma mater before a crowd in the Dow of more than 3,000 people—and that in the middle of a torrid July. For that great privilege, I owe the generosity of Melvin Vulgamore.

May he rest in peace.

– Rev. Harry T. Cook, ’61, rector-senior pastor (retired), St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Clawson, Michigan

Io Triumphe!

EDITOR John Perney CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Chuck Carlson, Amanda Layne, ’14, Bobby Lee, Claire Van Raaphorst, ’14, Dan Vecchioni, ’74, Jake Weber CLASS NOTES WRITERS Kim Fisher, Cameron Voss, ’20, Jake Weber DESIGNER Katherine Mueting Hibbs MARKETING/COMMUNICATIONS John Thompson, Eric Westmoreland Io Triumphe! is published twice annually by the Office of Marketing and Communications. It is distributed free to alumni and friends of the College.

Letters to the editor may be sent to: Office of Marketing and Communications Albion College 611 E. Porter Street Albion, MI 49224 communications@albion.edu www.albion.edu

Plan the Gift of a Lifetime You can make a difference in the lives of many future Britons by planning a gift today.

Our development staff makes giving from your estate a simple process and will ensure your gift provides you with immediate benefits.

To make your impact, contact our Development Office today.

517/629-0446 advancement@albion.edu albion.planmygift.org

ABOUT OUR NAME The unusual name for this publication comes from a yell written by members of the Class of 1900. The beginning words of the yell, “Io Triumphe!,” were probably borrowed from the poems of the Roman writer, Horace.

In 1936, the alumni of Albion College voted to name their magazine after the yell which by then had become a College tradition.

For years, Albion’s incoming students have learned these lines by heart: Io Triumphe! Io Triumphe!

Haben swaben rebecca le animor Whoop te whoop te sheller de-vere De-boom de ral de-i de-pa— Hooneka henaka whack a whack A-hob dob balde bora bolde bara Con slomade hob dob rah!

Al-bi-on Rah! FIND MORE ONLINE: www.albion.edu

Connect with students, faculty, staff, and alumni through Albion College’s social media channels.

Fall-Winter 2016-17 | 53

Office of Marketing and Communications 611 East Porter Street Albion, MI 49224

D. LAWRENCE PHOTO

Downtown Bound As Io Triumphe! went to press, the finishing touches were being applied to 101 N. Superior St., a completely renovated 20,000-square-foot anchor building adjacent to Albion City Hall. Formally introduced as The Ludington Center— honoring a longtime Briton family dedicated to service—at Homecoming in October, the century-old local landmark being leased by the College will be home to a wide range of tenants that engage directly with the community, including the Ford and Gerstacker institutes, the Career and Internship Center, and the 11 AmeriCorps VISTA workers currently on assignment in Albion. See more photos from Homecoming weekend on page 40.