Sept. 21, 2009
The Digest
What’s Happening at KVCC

What’s below in this edition

ü SSC showcase (Pages 1/2) ü $500,000 in awards (P-10/11)

ü Genome exhibit (Pages 2-4) ü Savings seminar (Page 11)

ü Fleda Brown (Pages 4/5) ü Grant deadline (Pages 11/12)

ü Digital paintings (Pages 5/6) ü City’s early days (Pages 12/13)

ü Wind academy (Pages 6/7) ü Debut day (Pages 13/14)

ü We’re ‘Thumbing’ (Page 8) ü Last chance (Pages 14/15)

ü Trash pick-up (Page 8) ü PTK open houses (Pages 15/16)

ü Brewing fuel (Page 9) ü She’s a winner (Page 16)

ü Bain briefing (Pages 9/10) ü Connection ‘thanks’ (Page 16)

ü And Finally (Pages 16/17)

☻☻☻☻☻☻

Student Success Center hosts 2-day open house

KVCC’s two-year-old initiative to make certain that students “make it” will open its doors to the public next week.

A two-day open house at the Student Success Center on the Texas Township Campus will welcome both current and prospective students, their families, and interested members of the public on Tuesday and Wednesday (Sept. 22-23) from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Launched as a pilot program for the 2007 winter semester, the Student Success Center with its staff of advocates has served more than 1,900 enrollees.

These advocates are the keys to a tracking system that monitors students, links them to the spectrum of KVCC resources, and keeps them on point to reach their goals, be it academic success to earn a degree, transfer to a four-year university, or enhance their ability to gain meaningful employment.

While this intense level of personal mentoring is geared for first-year students, it is also available to all enrollees, whether they need some guidance to improve their classroom performance or assistance to make their way through the process of higher education.

The student success advocates – who now total 11 – each seek to have at least five direct contacts with those who are assigned to their caseload. In addition to personal mentoring, each advocate points students toward special programs, events, workshops and seminars that are designed to meet their individual needs.

Among the center’s program components are:

● Academic counseling

● Life resources

● Prior-learning assessment

● Career advising

● Student-employment services and internships

● Tutoring through the KVCC Learning Center

● The Transfer Resource Center and The Focus Program

● Student activities and organizations

● Support services for veterans

The intent is to give students enough support to help them create independence. It provides a system of links to help students make the right choices so that they don’t wonder, wander and founder.

“The center wants to help identify their strengths and offer support through a holistic approach,” said Laura Cosby, the center’s director. “We want to help get them on the right track and avoid the wrong paths. The barriers to education are not entirely academic ones. There are many other factors – housing, transportation, family issues, financial concerns, nutrition, health, and self-defeating behaviors – that can come into play. Academic failure can be a symptom of other problems.”

‘GENOME’ exhibit opens Sept. 26

What the naked eye can’t see is proving that all the humans who can be seen are 99 and 44/100ths percent the same, whether they are as white as Ivory Snow or dark as molasses.

And, because of an extra inventory of these units - called genes - humans are different - but not all that different -- from other warm-blooded species of all shapes and sizes that occupy planet Earth.

Southwest Michigan residents will be able to see all of this for themselves when the nationally touring “GENOME: The Secret of How Life Works” opens on Saturday (Sept. 26) at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum and begins a stay through Jan. 10. Admission is free.

Two of the annual attractions at the downtown-Kalamazoo museum - Chemistry Day on Oct. 17 and Safe Halloween on Oct. 31 - are being themed to complement the intent of the exhibit. Those also are free.

“Genome” is made possible by Pfizer Inc and was produced by Evergreen Exhibitions in collaboration with the National Human Research Institute, a division of the National Institutes of Health, and the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research.

“Genome” explores how genes affect growth and aging, maps what might be in store for humanity, and offers a look at what your future children might look like.

All this became humanly possible once scientists mapped the human genome - a person’s entire set of genes.

The exhibition, which debuted at the Smithsonian in 2003, investigates the mysteries of the human gene, why the genome is being mapped, and the potential benefits of gene research, such as:

* Preventing and curing diseases

* Living longer

* Solving crimes

* Producing better food and drugs

The exhibit looks at the 200-year history of this science and the individuals who shaped it - from Gregor Mendel, the 19th-century monk who discovered the rules of inheritance by cultivating peas in a monastery garden, to Jim Watson and Francis Crick, who in the early 1950s unearthed the form and process of genetic replication, the famous DNA double helix. This Harvard University breakthrough is regarded as the most important biological discovery of the 20th century.

“The understanding of the human genome opens up an entirely new frontier for health-science research,” said Dr. Tom Turi, a genomic scientist with Pfizer Inc, “and it is anticipated that it will lead to new therapies and cures for devastating diseases. However, many people are unaware of the genome or its potential to enhance our lives.”

“Genome” uses interactive displays and family-friendly activities to help visitors understand the genome’s function and its role in daily life.

These include:

• An 8-by-25-foot display of DNA’s double helix structure that is enhanced by a video.

• The opportunity in the Discovery Theater to meet scientists who were instrumental in the discoveries leading up to the sequencing of the human genome. Another “show” discusses the genetic issues of the future.

• A working slot machine that demonstrates the odds that children will inherit genes for certain characteristics.

• Using the metaphor of a “Cookie Factory,” DNA, genes and proteins as the ingredients and recipes for “making” human beings can be understood.

• Gaining access to a cell to discover the workings of its parts and processes.

• Computer simulations to design new gene therapies, replacing disease-causing proteins with healthy new human genes.

Visitors will enter the exhibit through a circular corridor, encountering graphic and mirror images of themselves in the initial stages of life and as a mature human, reflecting who they were and who they are today.

Emanating from a mirror at the end of the tunnel is a swirling ribbon of genetic code, representing the genes that hold the secrets to where they came from, who they are and who they may become.

The exhibit’s “The Secret of Life” section explains what a gene, DNA, protein and cell are, and how genes are involved in reproduction, growth and the maintenance of life.

The role of this revolutionary branch of science and what it holds for the future comes alive by people with genetic conditions telling their stories. How DNA testing is solving some of history’s mysteries and helping to identify people who committed crimes with almost 100-percent certainty are also exhibit attractions.

“Genome” will be the second medical-science related exhibition brought to Kalamazoo under the auspices of Pfizer. “BRAIN: The World Inside Your Head” spent the fall and early winter of 2006 at the Museum.

Think about this the next time you peel a banana - that white fruit behind the yellow skin has 50 percent of the DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) that you do.

‘About Writing’ features poet Fleda Brown

A childhood summer retreat in northern Michigan seared the poetic soul of award-winner Fleda Brown, who will launch KVCC’s “About Writing” series for the 2009-10 academic year on Thursday, Oct. 1.

Raised and schooled in Arkansas, Brown, who now has emeritus status at the University of Delaware as an English professor and served as that state’s poet laureate for seven years this decade, will talk about her craft at 10 a.m. in the Student Commons Forum and follow that up with a 2:15 p.m. reading.

All of the “About Writing” presentations are free and open to the public. Each willfeature a 10 a.m. session about the craft of writing and a 2:15 p.m. reading.

Now living in Traverse City with her husband, Jerry Beasley, who also has emeritus status in the same department at Delaware, Brown received the 2007 prize for poetry named for Felix Pollak of the University of Wisconsin for her collection of works entitled “Reunion.”

Other critically acclaimed collections include “The Women Who Loved Elvis All Their Lives,” “Breathing In Breathing Out,” “Devil's Child,” “Do Not Peel the Birches,” and “Fishing with Blood.” The latter won Great Lakes Colleges New Writer’s Award.

Brown’s three degrees in English, including a doctorate in pre-1900 American literature, were earned from the University of Arkansas where she was a Phi Beta Kappa graduated. She joined the University of Delaware English Department in 1978 where she founded the Poets in the Schools Program, which she directed for more than 12 years.

She served as poet laureate of Delaware from 2001 to 2007 after which she retired from the university and moved to Michigan. Brown has been on the faculty for the master’s program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash., since 2006.

In 1985, Brown received the National Marine Education Association’s President’s Award for her performance as editor of the organization’s journal.

Delaware's poet laureate is selected by a statewide nomination process. Nominees submit a sample of poems, a resume, and a personal statement to the Delaware Division of the Arts. This material is sent to a committee of poets and other experts outside the state for a recommendation. The division makes the final decision for a gubernatorial appointment.

Here is the rest of the line-up of “About Writing” presenters:

·  Tom Montgomery-Fate, a professor of English at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Ill., who has taught with his wife in the Philippines, attended seminary, and written a collection of essays about the Nicaraguan revolution and the split in the Catholic Church. He’ll be on the Texas Township on Thursday, Nov. 5.

·  Tom Springer, author of “Looking for Hickories: The Forgotten Wildness of the Rural Midwest” and a senior editor/program officer for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation . Springer holds a master's degree in environmental journalism from Michigan State University after beginning his writing career at KVCC. He lives near Three Rivers. He’ll return to KVCC on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

·  Poet Thomas Lynch, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Esquire, Newsweek, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Times of London, teaches creative writing program at the University of Michigan, lives in Milford, and has been a funeral director for a quarter of a century.

His collection of essays, “Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality” has been selected to be the common reader for winter-semester English classes at KVCC where he will be making presentations on March 22-23.

KVCC English instructor Rob Haight is the coordinator and organizer of the series. He can be contacted at extension 4452 or .

Rzoska’s paintings part of Art Hop attractions

Linda Rzoska’s digital paintings of the Irish landscape, inspired by 10 visits to the culture-rich country, will be in Oct. 2 Art Hop loop in the KVCC Center for New Media.

Her impressions of what she has seen and experienced in Ireland by guiding KVCC students to Ireland over the last seven years will be on display from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. as part of the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo’s monthly celebration of creativity and imagination.

While Rzoska, a new-media instructor and now program coordinator at the center, has led KVCC contingents to Burren on Ireland’s west coast overlooking Galway Bay since 2000, her digital paintings in the Art Hop exhibit were the result of a 2009 winter-semester sabbatical that took her to Poland and The Netherlands (each for two weeks), and finally back to Ireland for a seven-week period.

Her repeated visits there and eventually the sabbatical stemmed from a question she asked herself – if she could do anything that she wanted, what would it be? The answer – teach art in Ireland.

A bit of googling on the Internet connected her to the Burren College of Art, which led to the excursions under the aegis of the KVCC-based Midwest Institute for International/Intercultural Education as well as an artist-in-residence appointment.

Why Ireland?

“I have Irish ancestry,” said Rzoska, who joined the KVCC faculty in 2000 after 23 years as an illustrator and graphic designer. “I have always been fascinated with Irish literature, history, folklore, art and Celtic spirituality. There is a connection for me and the country’s landscapes, and it’s why I always wanted to go there.”

For centuries, that part of Ireland has been a source of inspiration for all genre of artists — poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, musicians and playwrights, and now for Rzoska.