24 minute read
SHINING IN CHICAGO
CHICAGO EXPRESS
Through dedicated recruitment efforts, notable alumni achievements, and more, Albion is establishing a more direct westbound connection to America’s third largest metro.
By John Perney
When you think about Albion College’s recent success story in Chicago—and it is a bona fide success—it’s hard not to think about the little train station in downtown Albion.
Hop on the Wolverine from what Amtrak calls “the charming Italianate depot” that has served the community for more than 125 years, and you’ll reach Union Station in three and a half hours (Amtrak says 3:15 but let’s get real).
Indeed, for decades, one could say an opportunity for the College has been right at its doorstep. But Albion, with its more natural and traditional and still vibrant Detroit link, maintained a distinct Michigan identity: from the 2003-04 academic year through 2014-15, the percentage of Albion students from the Great Lakes State consistently ranged from 88% to 90%. But it doesn’t take a social scientist to understand that Michigan’s population trends (the state will lose another seat in Congress following last year’s census) demanded new strategies for recruitment.
Getting to Work
As the Wolverine approaches the platform at Union Station (or any big-city terminal), it gets a bit dark: perhaps a mix of the unknown, anticipation, and excitement for the buzz that awaits above and outside.
Quickly walking through the station searching for the right exit means navigating around commuters and other travelers. Suddenly, the grandeur of The Great Hall forces a pause: it looks better than ever!
Step outside, and you’re looking for your Uber, hailing a cab, or maybe hoofing it across the Chicago River to your Loop destination— navigating more people and, probably, construction. But the energy!
Metaphorical attempts aside, Albion’s efforts at building a student-recruitment hub in Chicago may have seemed daunting seven years ago. But the possibilities have always been there. And the results have been undeniable.
The number of Chicagoland students from Cook and surrounding counties enrolling at Albion College has increased more than eightfold, from 21 in the fall semester of 2014 to 172 in fall 2020. Fueling that surge has been the strong relationship established between Albion and the Noble Network of Charter Schools, a nonprofit organization that runs 17 charter public high schools and one middle school in Chicago. Relatedly, the percentage of students from Michigan has decreased across the same span, from 89.6% to 70.9%.
Albion enrollment from the Chicagoland region over the last 11 years.
Making It Happen
That percentage drop also reflects enhanced recruitment in other states, Texas and California in particular. But the Chicago success also stands out for the role alumni have gotten to play.
Britons like Austin Baidas, ’92, who for several years has hosted a rooftop barbecue in Wrigleyville featuring a mix of admitted and newly enrolled students, current students, alumni, faculty and staff, and friends of the College (the next one is July 15). Nearly a decade ago, Baidas connected with trustee Larry Schook, ’72, at alumni chapter events on how Albion could become more involved in their city—not simply to recruit students to campus, but to help them land internships and first jobs, and have Albion grads return home to Chicago to begin making their own impact.
“We’ve really had the opportunity here at Albion to set an example for the whole country and all of higher ed as to how to help first-generation students have success in their education,” said Baidas, a finance and operations consultant who serves as treasurer on the board of Howard Brown Health. He also recently joined Albion’s Board of Trustees. Regarding his and other events in Chicago, he adds, “We realize that some students don’t necessarily have the network through their families that other students have. We have been very intentional to have our events when school is not in session.” The schedule includes the annual March spring-break trip that the College’s Career and Internship Center organizes, bringing students to Chicago to meet with a variety of employers, many of whom are Albion alums like Jennifer Hegener, ’92.
“I work in the talent acquisition space so it’s a natural fit to help current students,” says Hegener, who co-chairs the Chicago Alumni Chapter with Will Loux, ’10. Her son, Colin, begins his first year at Albion this fall. “One thing that has always resonated with me about Albion College is the passion of the alumni and their willingness to help a fellow Brit.”
Count among them Robert Ryan, ’18. Known to many as Scooter, the Chicago native began work as an Albion admission counselor shortly after graduation. Since last October, the economics and management grad has been based in his hometown, where in addition to expanding Albion’s reach within Chicago Public Schools, he serves as a direct Albion presence for the Noble Network. That includes riding along on Noble bus trips for group campus visits, which resumed this spring following the pandemic. He’s there to answer questions, or perhaps ease nerves, or just to help pass the time.
Now based in Chicago, Scooter Ryan is beginning his fourth recruiting season for the Albion admission team. The economics and management graduate was a four-year men’s basketball letter winner.
“A couple of students wore Air Jordans,” Ryan recalls from his last trip, “so we had a conversation about Air Jordans for an hour. One student was so excited about the art history classes and the art in Bobbitt [Visual Arts Center], she challenged me to a draw-off on the way back.”
For the record, Scooter’s Spongebob Squarepants lost. (“She drew a bird that looked like an actual bird.”) But he knows a winning strategy when he sees one. “The Noble students hear about Albion through their high school counselors, but being in front of them really resonates,” he says.
And when he’s back in Albion, Ryan treasures those moments when he can say hello to students he helped bring to his alma mater. “I kind of feel like a bigger brother to them in a way,” he says. “Even if I’m just walking around campus, I want to make sure I maintain that connection.”
Turn the page and read about more Albion alums who are making a difference in Chicago.
HEALING THROUGH HELPING OTHERS
Shea Gardner in October 2020 at Indiana Dunes National Park, with Lake Michigan in the background.
An alumna applies the discoveries she made about herself in Albion and Chicago to create a more mindful journey for current and future student-athletes.
By Jake Weber
Few Albion College students consider the possibility of someday being featured in the alumni magazine—and if any ever did, Shea Gardner, ’12, definitely wasn’t one of them.
An almost-dropout who took a decade to finish her degree, Gardner’s story involves trauma and triumph. It’s also the surprising fulfillment of a future she first glimpsed at Albion.
Gardner and her husband (retired NFL player Rich Gardner) are the founders, executive team, and chief employees of Maroon Village, a nonprofit organization devoted to supporting young athletes on and off the field. Along with providing supplemental training and practice for a variety of sports, Maroon Village works to enhance self-esteem and resilience. Maroon Village operates on Chicago’s South Side and in nearby Gary, Indiana, communities where many young student-athletes see an athletic scholarship as their only chance for a college education. Shea is proud to note that many Maroon Village alumni have successfully taken that path.
An Abrupt Turn
A 2003 transfer student after one semester at Hillsdale College, Gardner (a Jackson, Michigan, native) played three years of soccer at Albion and worked several summers as a counselor with the College’s NCAA-funded National Youth Sports Program (NYSP). It all looked good on the outside, but on the inside, she was falling apart.
Through most of her teens, Gardner didn’t tell her family about years of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. In college, Gardner tried to balance classes and team practice while working with the psychological, legal, and family trauma that was piling up.
Risky behaviors and too much alcohol followed. “I found out in March that I wouldn’t be able to graduate in May, because of a class I had failed,” Gardner recalls grimly. “I had to walk away. I went home because I couldn’t take it anymore.”
An Opportunity
She didn’t leave Albion with a degree, but she did leave with a job, thanks to Dr. Len Berkey, the late sociology professor who helped Gardner apply to City Year in Chicago. Working for City Year and then other community agencies showed Gardner that she was on the right track, especially after meeting Rich during this time. A few years later, thanks to him, Shea spent the 2012 spring semester commuting between Chicago and Albion, where she was once again a full-time student. “I made the Dean’s List for the first and last time,” she says.
The couple married, had their first child, worked hard, and saw Maroon Village taking shape. Things were going well. Then
A graduation moment on the Quad with husband Rich Gardner.
Gardner works with student-athletes at Maroon Village, a Chicago nonprofit that provides additional training and practice opportunities while teaching ways to enhance self-esteem and resilience.
Gardner works with student-athletes at Maroon Village, a Chicago nonprofit that provides additional training and practice opportunities while teaching ways to enhance self-esteem and resilience.
Shea gave birth to their second child and “felt the bottom drop out” with the onset of postpartum depression (PPD).
“I didn’t know anything about yoga in 2016,” Gardner admits. An athlete all her life, she had dismissed the idea of yoga as exercise, and thought of it mainly as a hobby for middle-aged women in expensive gear. At the urging of friends, Gardner tried a 15-minute video on YouTube and “I knew right then I had to do it every day,” she says. “It wasn’t like running or lifting weights or soccer practice. I did the posture practice every day, even on days when I literally had only one free minute.”
As she continued to learn more about yoga, Gardner wondered: is there something here for Maroon Village? At first, Gardner admits, many of their athletes were reluctant to find out; like her, they didn’t see yoga as an activity that included them. It didn’t take too long, though, for her to start hearing positive feedback.
“I’m not really able to articulate what they ‘get’ about the yoga, but they get it,” Gardner says of the breathing, mindfulness, and posture exercise that’s standard for all Maroon Village participants. “There’s so much that happens in the process of becoming aware of self, but these processes help you to understand that you matter, that you can and do contribute, that you can be a leader and a student.”
Something Unexpected
As yoga relieved her PPD, Gardner discovered that yoga simultaneously opened up and helped heal her sexual-abuse trauma. Because she had found yoga through online social networks, she began to share her healing experiences back to those same networks. Suddenly, Gardner was engaged with a whole new community of people.
“It’s not a large group by any means,” she says of the people who follow her blog about her healing journey. Nonetheless, that blog has led to invitations for Gardner to hold workshops on trauma healing and yoga, and she is creating a variety of self-help materials for trauma survivors.
Gardner describes her work as “trauma sensitive” yet notes that this term doesn’t truly apply to yoga itself. “At its heart yoga isn’t trauma-sensitive; it is traumainformed,” she says. “You just have to make sure you are learning from somebody who knows yoga and the thousands of years of philosophy that come with it.”
Connections and Rewards
Even while secretly struggling on campus, Gardner asserts that Albion provided her with the life journey she has followed. Her experience with NYSP sparked the determination to work with youth and sports. And her advising meetings with Berkey continue to carry an impact today: “He helped me think critically about the work I wanted to do in the world and how I could go about getting it done,” she says. “Albion is absolutely why I’m here.”
And now, for Gardner and Maroon Village, the future is particularly promising. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Maroon Village was able to host two Albion interns during the summer of 2020, and Gardner looks forward to more. “The interns helped with the website and marketing, things we couldn’t do without them,” she says. “They researched data and participated in a grant-writing workshop. They were studentathletes and also worked out with us and the kids. It was great.”
Maroon Village is also poised for an expansion of its model. Gardner reports that they’re in talks with an Indiana college where Maroon Village would work with all sports teams in addition to helping the school develop curriculum related to trauma sensitivity.
“My lofty goal is to not only have Maroon Village work with athletic departments in K-12 schools and colleges, I would love to also have a platform to really talk about what it is that we are sharing,” Gardner says. “Again, it’s kind of indescribable, but people are ‘getting it’ when a college president and the athletic director come to see what we are doing. I’m excited to see where we go.”
BORROWING THE ADVOCACY HANDBOOK
“Because our job isn’t seen as directly tied to test scores, we aren’t sufficiently funded and most students in Chicago go K to 12 without having met a librarian,” says Nora Wiltse, whose parents are also Albion alums: Susan and Thomas Wiltse, ’68 ’69. “Our students all deserve to have a school librarian.”
For nearly 18 years, Nora Wiltse, ’99, has served elementary students and, by extension, her community as a Chicago Public Schools librarian. And for half of that time, when it comes to not sitting idly by, she has taken that sentiment to heart, growing into a leadership role with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) in fighting drastic library funding cutbacks implemented by the mayorally controlled district.
“I think, like in many new experiences in my life, curiosity is to blame for starting my advocacy work in CPS,” says Wiltse, who originally became a union delegate in 2011 because she was seeking more detailed information about the planned cuts. Before she knew it, “Suddenly I was in charge of a strike line of 80 people with multiple daily actions.”
Those 2012 efforts by Wiltse and her colleagues helped preserve some library services that had been targeted for elimination. “We felt like we were a power for positive change,” she recalls. Nine years later, after being part of the bargaining team for the 2019 CPS/CTU contract, she adds, “I’m so lucky to have had wonderful advocacy mentors, and now I see my own role shifting more toward training the next group of advocates.”
In February, Wiltse was honored as a Catalyst for Change by the American Library Association. The national award, presented every two years, in some ways can be seen as not only recognition for her years of action (and results), but as an acknowledgement of the spark that created the possibilities.
“Albion was a great place for me to develop leadership skills, simply because of the many opportunities I had from day one,” says Wiltse, who grew up in Elk Rapids and upon her campus arrival dived into everything from Student Senate and the tennis team to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, The Pleiad, campus jobs, and more. “Albion gave me a million chances to try and fail and learn and grow.”
That extended to her academic path as well. For a time, Wiltse says, she sought to take a course in every department. Finally, after a gap-year program, she recalls a memorable junior-year conversation with Frank Frick, professor of religious studies.
“I was talking with him in one of my classes, and he asked, ‘What’s your major?’ And I said I didn’t have one yet. And he said, ‘Who’s your advisor?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ He said, ‘Come to my office and we’ll figure it out.’”
With Frick “trying to piece together my classes into a major to graduate in four years,” as Wiltse puts it, she would go on to receive her degree in religious studies, complete with a study-abroad semester in Israel and Palestine. “Dr. Frick has had a lasting impact on me and I think of him often. I wanted to know a little about everything, so it’s no surprise when I later decided to go to graduate school for librarianship. The liberal arts and librarianship are two sides of the same coin.”
During particularly difficult days, Wiltse the undergrad would find herself in Stockwell Library’s sixth-floor stacks and its children’s book collection, where she “would choose a few favorites and sit on the floor and read.” An early sign of a professional passion, perhaps. And also a purpose.
“People sometimes think that a school library is outdated. That’s just not true,” she says. “The library is full of new tech and resources and physical books, and it’s something every student deserves to have.
“The advocacy we are doing in Chicago is an equity issue,” Wiltse continues. “And the divide between high-need and privileged neighborhoods is getting greater. I will keep fighting for more librarians.”
–John Perney
CATCHING UP WITH MARTY NESBITT, '85
The board chair of The Barack Obama Foundation and co-founder/co-CEO of private equity firm The Vistria Group takes stock of Albion’s recent efforts in Chicago.
Io Triumphe!: Where have you found the most rewards in being actively connected with Albion in recent years?
Nesbitt: I’ve been primarily connected around two things. One, my former roommate Mike Harrington (’85) has been leading the Board of Trustees, and so I’ve been engaged in having a dialogue with him about the areas of focus for the Board. My former basketball coach, Mike Turner (’69), has remained highly engaged at Albion since his retirement and he keeps me informed.
Secondly, I know the College has made a concerted effort to have a more diverse student body. I know a number of diverse students, probably more than historically, have come from Chicago to go to Albion. I’m a sponsor of the Noble Network of Charter Schools, and I know Albion has taken a number of students out of the Noble Network.
Even beyond the Noble link, what fuels this level of engagement with your alma mater?
Education is an important component of changing these socioeconomic dynamics in our communities around the country. Any institution that is doing more than its fair share to educate urban communities and African American students is obviously doing some important work. I have great interest in making the world a better place, and to the extent that Albion is making a serious effort at diversifying its student body, and helping to educate students from urban communities, that’s exciting and important.
In terms of enrollment and alumni engagement, the College has made notable strides in Chicago over the last five to 10 years. How much further can Albion go, in your view? What does that next level look like? Or, what challenges or roadblocks lie ahead?
I think the sky’s the limit. Of course, Chicago is a big city, with a lot of businesses, a thriving economy. There are lots of potential Albion students in Chicago and lots of opportunities in the city for Albion grads. I think what Albion has to do is to continue to produce good outcomes over a sustained period of time. The rest will take care of itself. The school’s relationship with Chicago will continue to grow.
Our new president, Dr. Mathew Johnson, emphasizes the importance of purpose, belonging, and action as it pertains to liberal arts education today. What do those three things mean to you when you think about Albion?
We all, as participants in this capitalistic democracy, have an obligation to be productively engaged, right? We have an obligation to improve our communities, to make the places we live better over time. A liberal arts education equips you to do that; it helps you understand how the world works in a pretty intimate way.
In that process of being educated, I think people find purpose, and they are put on a path to become difference makers when they graduate. We all have that obligation: to move the needle, to make the world a little bit better of a place than it was when we entered it.
Groundbreaking for the Obama Presidential Library in Jackson Park is scheduled for this fall. With all the effort that has led to this moment, and the work that lies ahead from the start of construction to its opening, it would seem there is a bit of a window for some reflection. Do you allow yourself that moment? If so, what have you found?
What I have found has been obvious to me from the start, as we come out of a year of turmoil in 2020, and the effects of the broadening wealth gap and healthcare disparity are on full display. The reflection is that the Obama Presidential Center is as important as ever, if not more important. The objective is to train and inspire leaders for the next generation, to engage in the community in a way that helps us do what we do better—be better neighbors, better citizens, and make this a more perfect world. The reflection is that the Foundation’s mission is important work and we got to keep slugging it out until we get it done.
Interview by John Perney
IN HER ENVIRONMENT: WHERE ART AND SCIENCE MEET
A snapshot from a photography program Catherine Game leads for veterans as executive director of Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods, located 19 miles northwest of Chicago. During her time at Albion, Game, who grew up in Iron Mountain, Michigan, was named a Morris K. Udall Scholar in recognition of her leadership, public service, and commitment to environmental issues.
MICHAEL KARDAS PHOTO
As a rising junior in 2006, Catherine Game, ’08, spent the summer with a bunch of kids in the Whitehouse Nature Center. It looked like a nature program (and yes, it was) but the real purpose for Game was to do research on environmental education. An art and biology double major, Game was convinced that art projects could be used to teach scientific concepts to children—and in many cases, were superior tools for getting that knowledge to stick.
It was an interesting academic question, a cool FURSCA project—and surprisingly enough, a precursor to Game’s current position as executive director of Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods. Located on a 565-acre Illinois State Nature Preserve north of Chicago, Brushwood hosts more than 200 concerts, exhibitions, workshops, and other arts-based activities each year, drawing more than 10,000 visitors in the process.
In some ways, it’s not that different from what Game did at Albion all those years ago. In other ways, Game and Brushwood are really reimagining what a nature center can, should, and must be in the 21st century.
“There are so many studies that show how natural settings help with anxiety, asthma, all kinds of health issues,” Game says. It’s not just about a nice, good-for-thesoul walk in the woods, either; Game notes one of Brushwood Center’s research partners at Northwestern University who is studying how blood glucose levels are better regulated in people who spend time outdoors.
Earlier this year, Game was one of three presenters at a nationwide conference on innovative mental health programs for military veterans. Working with a Chicagoarea VA hospital, Game oversees “At Ease,” a photography, art, and music program that has drawn an enthusiastic response from PTSD and brain-injury survivors.
She adds, “I’ve been named a Kinship Conservation Fellow this year—this is an organization that looks at market solutions for conservation. They’re funding a project that I’m exploring to incentivize collaboration between the healthcare sector and naturebased organizations. The goal is to improve health equity, decrease hospitalization costs, and increase investment in green spaces through value-based care. There is so much potential.”
New ideas are the easy part. For Game, the challenge for Brushwood comes with the “dead wood” of history and ideas that have gone unquestioned for too long.
“This dominant narrative of white heroes—from John Muir to Teddy Roosevelt—they’re not the real story of environmental history,” Game asserts. “There has been a lot of bias in the environmental field, but here at Brushwood, we’re working to change that.”
First and foremost, they’re not “just” counting program participants: Game says Brushwood is responsible for making sure these visitors reflect the diversity of Chicagoland communities. “There are many systemic issues that prevent people from engaging,” she explains. pointing out that while many people understand accessibility issues related to mobility, many more don’t see that English-only materials or uniformed park rangers can intimidate, confuse, or discourage visitors.
And “when you think of how people access nature,” Game says, “it very quickly becomes a conversation about access to land, power, and privilege. You can’t talk about healing the environment and nature without having conversations about these deeper issues from our history and our present.”
In opening this access, Game has helped Brushwood work with a local immigrant advocacy group to offer programs for parents and children traumatized by separation. She’s worked with indigenous groups and artists to celebrate Brushwood’s preEuropean history. She’s involved with political action against industrial pollution in nearby communities, and continuing her own journey of growth through Brushwood’s antiracism book club.
“We’re not about planting two million trees; our programs are about building trust with community members, supporting their goals, and embracing the arts as a cultural bridge,” Game says. “We’re contributing to the strengths and assets that already exist in communities in the Chicago region.”
–Jake Weber
HIS APPRAISAL: A CITY SECOND TO NONE
Rudy Aronoff, who majored in art history and minored in sociology, also connected with the Windy City while at Albion through the subject of his Honors thesis: the Chicago sculptor and printmaker H.C. Westermann.
When one thinks of A-list auctions of fine and decorative arts, the names Sotheby’s and Christie’s tend to come to mind, the centuries-old houses operating primarily out of London and New York.
“Chicago has always been on the map,” counters Rudy Aronoff, ’10, assistant managing director of the Chicago office of Heritage Auctions, the largest U.S.-based auction house and the world’s third biggest (behind those other two). “Expo Chicago is a very large modern and contemporary art fair that kicks off the fall season every year. And let’s not forget we have one of the most important museums—The Art Institute of Chicago—in the country. And, of course, there’s the architecture.”
Aronoff’s days do include museum visits, but more often he’s dealing with dust and spider webs in the homes of people he only recently met. “A lot of people think auctions are glamorous, but it’s actually not,” he says. “It’s a filthy job, because you’re crawling in people’s attics, you’re crawling in people’s basements. People think something is worth something because they’ve been told that their entire life, but they’re often wildly misinformed. And the thing they think is a tchotchke is a libation cup that’s worth $200,000. It’s a never-ending treasure hunt for me.”
Heritage’s specialty is in collectibles—including coins, jewelry and watches, books and manuscripts, vintage comics and trading cards, and other memorabilia—which suits Aronoff’s own collecting passion that has roots in an everyday dinnerware set by mid-century designer Russel Wright. The dishes had been regularly used by his great-grandparents.
“One of my aunts got them, and I was like, ‘What are those? Those are cool,’” he recalls. “That’s pretty much how it started. My parents would say it snowballed from there. I became very good at scouring used bookstores.”
By the time the Metro Detroit native was exploring colleges, “I liked that I was going to commingle art and art history,” Aronoff recalls about Albion, adding that at the public institution he considered, “the studio art and art history departments could not have been less connected.”
Aronoff was in for a big (and, as it turned out, life-changing) surprise from the day he arrived on campus as a first-year student in 2006. A steam pipe had burst that summer in the depths of Bobbitt Visual Arts Center, and the moisture buildup had put the College’s collections—its prized prints in particular—in potential peril.
“Albion has a really fabulous print collection that dates back to the old masters through to the present,” Aronoff says. As part of the damage-assessment and valuation process in the College’s insurance-claim filing, Art and Art History faculty Bille Wickre and Anne McCauley brought in Chicago-based specialist Roberta Kramer. It wasn’t long before Aronoff was assisting the group, gaining invaluable experience. He has stayed connected with Kramer ever since, working for her soon after graduation and moving with her to Heritage in 2016 when the house opened its Chicago office.
Aronoff also remains connected with the professors who not only introduced him to the ins and outs of etchings, aquatints, linocuts and woodcuts (including in his favorite class, The History of Prints, co-taught by McCauley and Wickre), but who enabled him “to have hands-on experience with the real thing.”
“Anne and Bille are dear friends professionally and personally,” Aronoff says. “Everyone at Albion was really supportive of what I wanted to do. You literally selfdirect, and I like that. I did what I wanted to do and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Albion was the absolute right decision.”
–John Perney
