The Digest
What’s Happening at KVCC
What’s below in this edition
ü A memorable evening (Pages 1-3) ü Ferris folks to visit (Pages 6/7)
ü Animation workshops (Page 3) ü ‘Wright’ flight (Pages 7/8)
ü How to negotiate (Page 4) ü Bookstore inventory (Page 8)
ü Music by Millish (Pages 4/5) ü M-TEC advisers (Page 8)
ü 40 ‘Relayers’ (Pages 5/6) ü Science in Toyland (Pages 9-11)
ü And finally (Page 11)
☻☻☻☻☻☻
Stryker’s Brown packs scholarship dinner
Before a turnout of 327 that doubled the attendance at the first “Opportunities for Education,” the KVCC Foundation’s May 31 event to increase scholarship dollars, Stryker Corporation’s John Brown offered “Lessons Learned” that can help a person make it through the minefields of life, business and personal relations with ethics and dignity in hand.
According to Steve Doherty, executive director of the foundation and the college’s director of development, ticket sales for the dinner at the Radisson Plaza Hotel & Suites netted $44,275, but the final count won’t be available until around the end of June when additional donations are expected from those in the audience who were inspired by the stories told by three recipients of foundation scholarships.
After hearing student Tina Marie Michaels comment about her journey through and over the potholes in her life, including a gripping essay she wrote in a KVCC writing class about what it was like to spend a few weeks in a shelter for the homeless and displaced, Brown enlightened his listeners with the bumps and bruises he encountered along the way, and what he learned from those experiences.
The anecdotes ranged from remembering a swat from a rubber hose on his 3-year-old backside after ignoring his laboring father’s requests -- to nearly blinding himself and endangering part of his hand when playing with dynamite caps -- to narrowly avoiding the deaths of two people because of his failure to communicate honestly -- to being brought on the carpet by company bigwigs to explain a half-million-dollar shortfall in a budget.
Here are the “Lessons Learned” from those and other encounters:
● When people are hard at work, stay out of the way. “That happens all over the place,” said Brown, who took the Stryker enterprises from annual sales of $22.7 million in 1977 when he joined the Kalamazoo-based company to placement on the Fortune 500 list and yearly sales exceeding $3 billion within 25 years. (Stryker’s annual sales are now nearing $5 billion.) “Smart leaders learn to stay out of the way,” he said.
● “Bad things happen no matter what,” said the reigning chairman of Stryker’s board about the death of his dog, “and you never really get over them. They say you do, but you don’t.”
● Talking about coming within a few millimeters of being blinded for life by 23 pieces of shrapnel that pierced his boy’s face, Brown advised “think before you act. Take action only after thinking things through.”
● There is a code of conduct “that still matters,” he said. “Don’t lie. Don’t cheat. And don’t steal.”
● “Ask if you don’t know,” he said, referring to the day as a fledgling railroad hand when he told a veteran worker that “of course,” he knew what the phrase “making a drop” meant. “I came within a few inches of causing the deaths of two people (because of some “dropped” runaway railcars he was responsible for controlling). Never let your ego get in the way.”
● Flashing back to his appointment to head a team of engineers to solve a rocket-propulsion problem for the former Morton-Thiokol Corp. in the wake of six failed attempts by predecessors, Brown counseled that “teamwork does matter.”
● Acknowledging that at one stop along his business career when he was regarded as a company’s “enforcer” to make certain people completed their assignments with success, Brown said that “the numbers always matter. Knowing that kept me from being fired.”
● “Accept challenges,” he said, talking about what he faced when Stryker decided to take its stock to the public in 1979. The “challenge” in this case was a quasi-promise to grow by 20 percent each year.
● “If you do the deal,” Brown said, “make sure it works.” Incorporated in the 20-percent risk was the acquisition of a New Jersey enterprise that reportedly was run by a “couple of characters.” That purchase resulted in Stryker becoming a major player in the medical-implant business. “When you go out on that limb on your own, you better be right.”
● The true purpose of setting goals, he said, “is that it give you focus. It takes you through the strategic planning needed to achieve that annual 20-percent growth.”
Brown concluded that these were the key lessons learned in his journey about character and values, and “they made a difference in my life.”
Joining the foundation and college in sponsoring the event and a video focusing on the three students were WKZO radio, the Radisson in downtown Kalamazoo, The Greenleaf Companies, and Fifth Third Bank.
Other corporate and individual sponsors that purchased 42 tables for the fund-raiser were:
Allen Edwin Homes, Weber Specialties Co., Bermo Enterprises Inc., Borgess Medical Center, Stryker Corp., CTS Telecom Inc., Schupan & Sons Inc., DeMent and Marquardt PLC, Plante Moran, Eckert Wordell, Pfizer Inc., Fluid Process Equipment, National City, Miller Johnson, Mol-Son Inc., Meyer C. Weiner Co., LaSalle Bank, Keystone Community Bank, Jerry Miller, and Marilyn and Larry Schlack.
The KVCC Foundation was formed in 1980 and has accumulated nearly $8 million in assets. Its mission is to enhance educational opportunities and the learning environment at the college by supporting the academic, literary and scientific activities of KVCC students and faculty.
Its assists the college’s Honors Program, minority and non-traditional students through scholarships and awards grants to faculty that promote innovative approaches to learning.
“That represents a minimal fraction of the dollar value of scholarships that are available through the KVCC Office of Financial Aid,” Doherty said. “That type of assistance has federal and state sources that carry restrictions. So do some of those scholarships established by organizations or individuals. And all of those are very important.
“Ours, however, are more open-ended, less restrictive, and available to a broader representation of students who choose to attend KVCC,” Doherty said. “They are what our ‘Opportunities for Education’ event is all about.”
Animation workshops for youths
The fundamentals and advanced stages of the art of animation, and how that all applies in the creation of video games, will be covered in a trio of three-day workshops in June at the KVCC Center for New Media.
Targeted for students at both the middle-school and high-school levels, the workshops are being arranged under the auspices of the Kalamazoo Animation Festival International (KAFI). Two are slated for June 13-15 and the third on June 15-17. The fee is $150 per student.
“Animation Workshop I” is aimed at middle schoolers and covers the basics of making paper puppets, how to bring those creations to life through computerized animation, and how to add sound effects and voices to the productions. The three sessions will run from 8 a.m. to noon.
Also slated for the June 13-15 time slot is “Animation Workshop II,” which is designed for students in high school. Using a variety of software, this 15-hour workshop will teach participants the basics of animation. The capstone will be the creation of a short animated piece by each enrollee. These sessions will run from 1 to 5:30 p.m.
The third workshop is “Game Design.” It is open to both middle-school and high-school students who have a working knowledge of the basics of animation.
This workshop will guide participants through the process of creating a video game. It will focus on the generation of new concepts for games and how to communicate concepts to a prospective publisher. The dates are June 15-17 from 8 a.m. to noon.
More information about the workshops and registration is available by contacting Maggie Noteboom at extension 7883 or .
KAFI, a biennial salute to the art of animation, is scheduled to return to its downtown-Kalamazoo venues in May of 2007.
Its website is http://kafi.kvcc.edu.
‘Win-Win Approach’ to negotiating is seminar theme
A one-day seminar on improving decision-making and problem-solving at a group level is booked for the KVCC M-TEC on Tuesday (June 6).
Led by KVCC communications instructor Bruce Punches, who is also a licensed psychotherapist, the “Win-Win Approach” seminar is scheduled for 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The fee is $225, and includes a lunch and materials focusing on effective forms of negotiations.
The target audience includes those in the training profession, team leaders in organizations and businesses, negotiating groups, all levels of management and supervisory personnel, and human-resource professionals.
The “Win-Win Approach” to communications utilizes a method that encourages people to work beyond a compromise and to forge a solution that allows all parties to reach their goals.
Punches will outline a step-by-step process that increases a person’s persuasive appeal by creating the structure needed to promote individual receptivity to other ideas and points of view.
The communication techniques will apply to situations both within and outside a participant’s organization, offer methods to promote openness, collaboration and buy-in, identify barriers to effective communicating when difficult issues are encountered, and how to overcome those barriers.
For more information or to register, call (269) 353-1253 or visit the M-TEC website at www.mteckvcc.com.
Celtic band launches concert series
Beginning the first full week in June, the Kalamazoo Valley Museum will launch its Thursday slate of evening programming for adults with five concerts and six films in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater.
Also slated for the summer are the free showings of back-to-back-to-back episodes of three PBS documentaries on Sundays.
The Celtic band Millish opens the summer-concert series on June 8.
The surfing classic, “The Endless Summer,” is the June 15 attraction and chronicles the adventures of two young surfers who travel the world in search of the perfect wave. The concept in this 1966 quasi-documentary was unique for the time, and it made for an entertaining and visually attractive adventure. Bruce Brown, as writer, director and cinematographer, did much to popularize the sport and simultaneously provide refreshing comments on almost of the locations that were visited. One doesn’t have to be a surfer/surfing fan to enjoy the experience.
The music of Glowfriends is the concert booking for June 22.
All shows begin at 7:30 p.m. on that Thursday. Admission is $5; $3 for students with IDs.
Millish, a four-man combo, is gaining a reputation for it cross-pollination of musical venues that “sets your blood on fire and helps your heart to soar," according to one reviewer. "The synergy created by this group of musicians transcends what one might expect to hear from a Celtic-oriented quartet. Millish has a wonderful ability to present serious music with a playful 'dare-me-not-to' attitude toward arrangements and genres of their selections.”
Frequently featured at the Saline Celtic Festival, Millish has been mining a vein of Irish music, melting it down, and adding cultures “with the zeal of a slightly deranged chef” over the last four years.
Millish is comprised of a state-champion bluegrass fiddler, Brad Phillips, award-winning jazz percussionist Mike Shimmin, world-champion piper Tyler Duncan, and guitarist Jesse Lee Mason, all of whom share an active interest in jazz.
The recipient of a pair of awards from International Acoustic Music Association, Millish, which is based in Ann Arbor, embarked on an 18-city, 18-concert tour of Germany. A typical concert will feature classic Irish jigs, American rock ‘n’ roll, and the music of Scotland, Brittany, Bulgaria, and Spain.
Glowfriends was founded and fronted by a Kalamazoo brother-and-sister duo, Mark and April Morris. She does the vocals in their folk-rock style and he plays the guitar. Other members are Holly Klutts Morris on bass guitar, Jenn Hendrix on vibraphone, and percussionist J. W. Hendrix III.
While Glowfriends had performed in and around the Kalamazoo area for several years, the group was also booked into the International Pop Overthrow Festival in Liverpool, England.
Here’s the rest of the “Thursdays at the Museum” line-up of concerts and films:
● The German film, “The Forest for the Trees,” June 29.
● “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” July 6.
● The Shawn Bell Group, July 13.
● “Stormy Weather,” July 20.
● Kruziki Transatlantica Quintet, July 27.
● Folk artist Patricia Pettinga, Aug. 3.
● “Spare Parts,” a Slovenian film, Aug. 10.
● The Norwegian “Hawaii, Oslo,” Aug. 17.
Beginning June 11 and continuing through Aug. 6 will be the Sunday showings of three award-winning documentaries. The stories of Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh and others are told in “Great Artists” at 1:30 p.m. The 2:30 attraction will be episodes of James Burke’s “Connections 2,” while the roots of western civilization are explored in “Ancient History” at 3:30 p.m.
Advance purchase of tickets for fee-based events can be made in person at the museum or by phone with a credit/debit card. Call (269) 373-7990 or (800) 772-3370.
No refunds will be made on advanced tickets. Descriptions of each film and presentation can be found at www.kalamazoomuseum.org.