The Digest
What’s Happening at KVCC
What’s below in this edition
Student Success Center (Pages 1-3)KAFI deadline (Pages 10/11)
‘Citizen King’ (Page 3)Ticket to Ireland (Pages 11/12)
Artists Forum (Pages 4/5)BRAIN ending (Pages 12-14)
Link to history (Page 5) Digital art (Page 14)
Nice touch (Page 5) Mgt. accounting (Pages 14/15)
Mileage (Page 5)Mime time (Pages 15/16)
Music at museum (Page6)Reading Together (Pages 16/17)
Welcome back (Page 6)Eye on autism (Pages 17/18)
Kalamazoo’s ‘asylum’ (Pages 6/7)Project management (Page 18)
Bridges’ play (Pages 7/8)Blood clinic (Page 18)
Film series (Pages 8-10)And finally (Pages 18/19)
☻☻☻☻☻☻
New student-retention era begins
KVCC’s latest initiative to retain the vast majority of students who come through the doors and to help them reach their goals will be ready for action at the start of the winter semester on Monday (Jan. 8).
Temporarily based in The Gallery on the Texas Township Campus, the “Student Success Center” will feature an intensive, hands-on, one-on-one interaction with some 500 students.
There will also be a satellite operation based in the college’s Anna Whitten Hall in downtown Kalamazoo.
“KVCC’s retention rate of students has not been good enough,” said President Marilyn Schlack who organized a cadre of student-services staff members into a planning team about midway through 2006. “Like Hallmark cards – even though we cared enough to try our very best, the results were still not good enough. Too many were falling through the cracks.”
The pilot project will be funded for $608,000 over a three-year period by one of the college’s “Innovative Thinking” grants.
“If we retain only 10 percent of those who drop out,” Schlack said, “that revenue will pay for the center’s operation. If we define graduation as retention, we will always have a poor percentage. The secret is to track a student’s goals, whatever those goals are, and use that measuring stick as retention.”
The concept was fashioned by: Diane Vandenberg, college recruiter and student-admissions specialist; Lois Baldwin, special-services counselor; Colleen Olson, director of prior-learning assessment; Laura Cosby, director of career and assessment services; Lois Brinson, coordinator of apprenticeships, internships and student employment; Jackie Cantrell, director of learning services at the Arcadia Commons Campus; Bonita Bates, director of the college’s Focus Program and supervisor of the Brother2Brother Program; Heidi Stevens-Ratti, Arcadia Commons Campus counselor; and Gail Fredericks, director of learning services.
All will be actively involved in Student Success Center activities, services and functions, as well as four newly hired, part-time “success advocates” who be interacting with the pilot group of students on a regular basis during each week of the winter semester.
The pilot group of students will be invited to take part as determined by their performance on KVCC’s battery of college-ready tests, by whether they are undecided on a field of study to pursue, and by their choice of seeking certificates or degrees in technical programs.
“After orientation and career-assessment measurements,” Baldwin said, “students will be linked to one of the four ‘success advocates’ who will help monitor their academic progress right from the start. As needed, they will also be connected to any of the other student-support services offered by KVCC that can assist in their success in reaching their chosen goal.
“It’s been shown that students who don’t stay in school,” Vandenberg said, “are not exposed to the student services that are available to help them stay in school. Some may need daily attention at first -- some twice a week or more – but there will be a regular schedule of connections.”
“The Student Success Center will regularly monitor the progress in whatever each student needs to achieve,” Baldwin said. “We are kind of calling it ‘intrusive intervention.’ It will be intensive, one-on-one, personal, and full of follow-ups.”
“If some of it or all of it doesn’t work,” Schlack said, “components will be changed as the project continues.
“The objective will be to catch them earlier in the process and channel them toward their interests and toward a goal that can be reached,” Schlack said. “We want to catch them up front in the college process. One alternative could be that these students audit courses at first instead of going after credits and a grade.”
In addition to determining by specific assessments each student’s particular needs – such as a weakness in determining percentages, the array of services will cover employment opportunities, the use of technology and its aspects to provide feedback and assistance with the participants provided the best, top-of-the-line technology to bridge the “Digital Divide.”
The “success advocates” will assess motivation and why students are not all that enthused about what they are doing. Tutoring, counseling, career guidance, advising and supplemental instructions will also be involved.
The multicultural aspects that thwart retention will be addressed, along with “lots of monitoring and one-on-one tracking,” Vandenberg said.
“The game plan is to go after the students right away and not wait for them to come for assistance when it might be too late,” Schlack said. “This will be a more proactive approach to students. The center will be charged with assisting students enrolled in college to stay here until they earn their basic degree or reach their personal goal.”
The KVCC Board of Trustees approved the project’s concept and its budget at the governing body’s December meeting.
At the college’s Dec. 21 commencement ceremony, KVCC board chairman Chris Schauer told the fall-semester graduates that “if all goes as planned for our college, there will be more of you -- sitting out there in graduation gowns -- at future evenings such as these.
“KVCC has always prided itself as a place that cares, that takes the extra step to help students reach their goals,” Schauer said. “Beginning in January, we intend to try even harder, to take even more steps to make certain that those who walk through our doors get what they come for.”
He believes the intensive one-on-one services will intercept problems before they happen, will help chart career and educational paths, will provide mentoring and tutoring that will short-circuit the drop-out rate, and will engage in “any other kind of appropriate in effect -- hand-holding -- that will aid in their retention.”
In other words, Schauer said, “students are going to have to work hard at not succeeding, at not staying the course. They will have to make a concentrated effort at failing. That’s why, because of the Student Success Center, we intend to see a lot more smiling faces at future graduation celebrations.”
‘Citizen King’ at museum
“Citizen King,” the installment of PBS’s “American Experience” series that traces the final five years of the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will be shown in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum's Mary Jane Stryker Theater as part of the college's observance of the federal holiday saluting the slain civil-rights leader.
The 1 p.m. showing on Monday, Jan. 15, at 1:30 p.m. is free and open to the public.
"Citizen King” follows King's efforts to recast himself by embracing causes beyond the Civil Rights Movement by becoming a champion of the poor and anoutspoken opponent of the war in Vietnam.
The museum is open from 1 to 5 p.m. on the King holiday.
For more information, contact, Jay Gavan, the museum’s special-events coordinator at extension 7972 or
Sax jazz virtuoso is Artists Forum booking
Regarded as the best saxophonist of his generation, jazz stylist Chris Potter will perform for an Artists Forum audience on Wednesday, Feb. 21, at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert in the Dale Lake Auditorium on the Texas Township Campus will go on sale Jan. 21 -- $15 for general admission, $10 for students.
In effect, the 36-year-old devotee of the likes of Miles Davis, Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck will be following in the footsteps of Marian McPartland, who is the jazz pianist credited with discovering him and who has performed for Kalamazoo audiences several times.
The college’s Artists Forum series each academic year is co-sponsored by the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation.
Born in Chicago but raised in Columbia, S. C., Potter began strumming a guitar and playing that “clink-clink jazz” on the piano as a 3 year old.
By the age of 10, his choice of instrument had switched to an alto sax and he played his first gig three years later.
His parents’ extensive record collection broadened Potter’s musical education from Bach to the Beatles, but the legends of jazz attracted his keenest interest.
When McPartland first heard Potter’s style as a 15 year old, she advised his father that the youth was ready for the road with a unit as celebratory as Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd.
But finishing high school remained the priority and by the time the diploma was hanging on the wall, Potter’s stable of instruments included alto, tenor and soprano saxophones, the bass clarinet and alto flute.
Potter’s 18th birthday found him enrolled in the Manhattan School of Music in New York City where he formed a lasting friendship with one of his professors, pianist Kenny Werner, and re-connected with Red Rodney, with whom he had played at a jazz festival in Columbia.
Over the next four years, Potter honed his skills at the side of the bebop heavyweight in a quintet until Rodney died in 1994.
Graduating from Manhattan in 1993, Potter began a long series of sideman activities with top jazz performers, including guesting with McPartland on one of her albums.
By the mid-1990s, Potters was cutting his own albums as a combo leader. One was cited as the year’s top CD by both Jazziz and The New York Times.
He also performed on Steely Dan’s Grammy-nominated, gold album “Two Against Nature.”
Potter earned his own Grammy nomination for “best instrumental jazz solo” for his work on Joanne Brackeen’s “Pink Elephant Magic.”
He’s the youngest recipient ever to receive the annual Danish Jazzpar Prize.
Potter has performed with his own groups since early 2001 in Paris, London, Florence, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and other jazz-happy urban centers.
He has been a featured performer at the Monterey Jazz Festival and has sided for Dave Holland.
The multi-reedman and composer Chris Potter is cited by critics and peers as the finest saxophonist of his generation for two reasons – his own style and for being well-schooled in the masters who have blazed the trail in the musical genre.
“I want my music to have that kind of emotional impact,” Potter said. “What I learned from them in terms of phrasing, sound, and approach to rhythm will never be outdated.
“I would like to basically use the same aesthetic sensibility with more contemporary harmonic and rhythmic concepts,” he said, “while being influenced by classical, world music, funk, rock, rap, country, whatever -- digesting new ideas, new influences to keep the freshness alive.
“Each band leader, each great musician I’ve had the chance to work with,” Potter said, “has inspired me in a certain way. Without all those experiences I don’t think I’d be ready to be doing this now.
“I want people to dance if they can, to feel the music and not think of it as something complicated and forbidding,” he said. “I want to be communicating something. You can do that and not sacrifice anything artistically.”
Potter has been able to accomplish all of this despite a bout with Meniere’s disease, a recurring condition that eroded much of the hearing in one ear.
Tickets for Potter’s Artists Forum concert can be purchased at the KVCC Bookstore on the Texas Township Campus and at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
Our own C-SPAN and Book TV?
KVCC’s libraries have started subscribing to a new American history database, “Issues and Controversies in American History,” according to Jim Ratliff.
The link that will get KVCC’ers in if they are using an on-campus computer to access the Internet is:
Ratliff reports that the link will soon be added to the library system’s database page that will make it available off campus.
She’s ‘Decorating Rita’
Rita Fox, a part-time math instructor for the past few academic years, is also a full-time, impromptu interior decorator.
She has taken it upon herself to decorate the faculty lounge on the Texas Township Campus as the time of year, season, holiday, or whatever dictates. Meaning, that the lounge will probably be full of hearts and flowers when Valentine’s Day rolls around.
Fox has provided tablecloths, wreaths, centerpieces, figurines, and any other kind of item that will add to the décor and make the lounge an even nicer respite when going for a cup of coffee or a friendly chat.
For example, last summer she brought in a full-sized raft and a set of oars, along with sand pails and sand shovels – but no eardrum-busting portable radios and certainly no coolers full of social beverages that frequently find their way to the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Another different-kind of treat comes in the form of jigsaw puzzles that Lynne Morrison provides.
Both add up to nice touches.
Mileage change
The re-imbursement rate for auto mileage accumulated on college business has changed now that the calendar has turned to 2007.
Effective the first of the year, the payback rate will be 48.5 cents a mile, an increase from the 44.5 cents that had been in effect.
Thursday concerts start at museum
If you like concerts where the performers are up close and personal, then the Kalamazoo Valley Museum is the place to go on four Thursday nights through the end of the winter semester
Booked for its “Music at the Museum” series in the 84-seat, surround-sound Mary Jane Stryker Theater are combos and individual performers who are close enough to reach out and touch, as opposed to a Rolling Stones concert in which there is a good chance to be seated in the next time zone or area code.
Tickets for each 7:30 p.m. performance don’t require taking out a second mortgage either. Admission is $5, and here is who you will get to enjoy:
♫ The folk and country music of The McClains – Jan. 11.
♫ Singer/songwriters Mark Duval and Traci Seuss – Feb. 8.
♫ The jazz-cajun-old time music combo of Steppin’ In It – March 15.
♫ Folk singer Rachel Davis accompanied by Bret Hartenbach – April 12.
♫ And one of the most famous acts across the planet, “To Be Announced.”
The McClains are a family group from Mattawan who plays a mix of old-time American songs and originals in a bluegrassy style. "Songs for the Path" is the name of the group’s latest CD.
Welcome-Back fun
As part of the start of the winter-spring semester on Monday (Jan. 8), the Student Commons will be hosting a mini-Welcome Back event for students.
From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., there will be give-a-ways, games, caricature drawings, and other fun activities in the Commons that are open to students, faculty and staff.
Kalamazoo asylum kicks off 2007 series
A third presentation of “The History of the Kalamazoo Insane Asylum” on Jan. 7 kicks off the winter installment of the Kalamazoo Valley Museum’s “Sunday Series” that highlights the history of Southwest Michigan.
Curator Tom Dietz will flash back to the institution’s establishment, the operation over the years, its heyday, and contemporary times at 1:30 p.m. in the Mary Jane Stryker Theater. All programs in the series are free.
The first two were standing-room-only attractions at the Stryker Theater.
Dietz traces the community’s mental-health legacy to Aug. 29, 1859, when the Michigan Asylum for the Insane, as it was first known, opened in Kalamazoo.
The Michigan Legislature had authorized the facility a decade earlier but lawmakers failed to provide sufficient funds for its construction. The asylum was a response to efforts by reformers such as Dorothea Dix, who advocated more humane treatment of the mentally ill.
According to Dietz’s research, in 1848, Gov. Epaphroditus Ransom of Kalamazoo appointed a panel that proposed Michigan establish an asylum. When local citizens donated $1,500 and 10 acres of land for the project, the committee, which included Ransom’s law partner, Charles E. Stuart, recommended the hospital be built in Kalamazoo.
The original site was on land north of Main Street between Elm Street and Stuart Avenue. Many felt this was too close to town so the decision was made to sell that property and buy land in what was then the country along Asylum Avenue, now Oakland Drive.
Dr. John Gray of New York was the first superintendent but he was unable to persuade the legislature to pay for the construction of the asylum. When he resigned in 1856, his assistant, Dr. Edwin H. Van Deusen, was appointed his replacement. Dr. Van Deusen oversaw the construction and the formal opening of the hospital.