News Articles

It’s fascinating music trivia: one of Beethoven’s greatest piano works, the Diabelli Variations, is Volume II, but Beethoven did not write, or even contribute to, Volume I. Some 200 years later, Albion College music professor Lia Jensen-Abbott—whose doctoral work focused on Beethoven’s Variations—is now putting a new spin on Volume I, with an idea the creative genius of Beethoven could never have imagined.

Lauren Bergeron, ’21, was one of just 60 students nationwide chosen to participate in the Council on Undergraduate Research’s “Posters on the Hill,” an event designed to showcase current student research for federal lawmakers and other government officials. Bergeron was further invited to the inaugural Johns Hopkins University Richard Macksey National Undergraduate Humanities Research Symposium, a mega-event involving more than 500 students. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of both April events, she can take solace knowing that Albion is represented among the country’s top student research programs.

“I chose to go to South Africa in part because I didn’t want to go somewhere ‘easy’—another campus inside a different version of a college bubble or a European country where I wouldn’t be challenged to examine my race, privilege, and implicit biases,” says Isabel Allaway, ’20, of her off-campus semester as this year’s Kim Tunnicliff Fellow.

Concern generated by the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19 led to Albion College’s decision late last week to postpone the annual Alumni Awards Ceremony, originally scheduled for April 17, will be postponed to April 16, 2021.

Albion Everywhere, a celebration of Albion College’s 185th anniversary and originally slated to feature alumni hosts at sites around the country, will now be an online Facebook event on Thursday, March 19 at 8 p.m. ET.

Education professor Suellyn Henke and her First-Year Seminar students had a unique social/cultural/political experience during their trip to Hawai’i last month. The Albion group visited the ongoing peaceful protest at the base of Mauna Kea. where they participated in a traditional ceremony establishing a relationship between their Michigan college and the sacred mountain.

Albion College placed 60th out of 1,063 private four-year U.S. colleges and universities in student-services spending for 2017-18 in a ranking published earlier this month by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Within Michigan, Albion is ranked No. 1 of any private college or university.

Economics and Management Professor Vicki Baker will help support faculty development at University College Utrecht in The Netherlands from February 28 to March 13 as a Fulbright Specilaist. “This is now a global issue,” she says.

Even among students of public policy, the work of lobbying firms isn’t always recognized. But Latrell Crenshaw, ’21, spent the fall 2019 semester understanding their many functions as an intern with Michigan Legislative Consultants.

The quality of an Albion College education is being recognized in a new LendEDU ranking of the Most Desired Colleges of the Last Decade. The list focuses on 1,253 four-year schools, consisting of private and public colleges and universities, from the 2008-09 and 2018-19 academic years. Albion places 457 overall, and No. 3 among the 13 nationally recognized liberal arts institutions that comprise the Great Lakes Colleges Association.