News

Scott Melzer, professor of sociology in Albion College’s Anthropology and Sociology Department, has just written a new book, Manhood Impossible, about the changing roles of fathers in today’s society. He offered a number of insights on the topic in a wide-ranging online interview with The Atlantic.

“Earlier this summer, while chatting with a group of Albion churchgoers, I made a remark about religious diversity and immediately regretted it,” writes Tyler Eyster, ’20. “I worried that these older people might be offended by the idea that one could embrace people of different faiths. Later, a woman in the group told me, ‘If you think we think we’re the only ones going to heaven, you’re wrong. These people are my family and I love them, but if I had to stay with just them for all eternity, I’d probably walk right out those Pearly Gates.'”

It has been a long, sometimes frustrating, but always enlightening journey for the Zuni Pueblo of New Mexico and Albion College, but an important cultural artifact, and a symbol of the Zuni tradition, is back home where it belongs.

There is something about the natural world that has always spoken to Nicole Wood. So when the opportunity arose to become director of the Whitehouse Nature Center, she jumped at the opportunity. Now she wants the center, tucked away just off campus, to find a new identity.

A number of appealing features continue to attract students from across the country to Albion College, as demonstrated by the Class of 2022. Of the 431 first-year students and 35 transfer students, more than 30 percent come from states other than Michigan.

Not quite ready to face the job market, two friends decide to hike the length of the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail and along the way discover much about each other, themselves and the world around them. Says one: it was a “life-changing experience.”

The quality of an Albion College education is being recognized again by The Princeton Review as among the nation’s best, evidenced by Albion’s inclusion in The Best 384 Colleges, the 2019 edition of the test-prep company’s popular guide. According to the book, students described the Albion academic experience as “rigorous but rewarding” with “huge opportunities.”

Astronaut Josh Cassada, an Albion College Class of 1995 alumnus, will fly the first mission of a Boeing-manufactured commercial spacecraft to the International Space Station, NASA announced today. It will be Cassada’s first spaceflight after his selection by NASA as part of its 2013 astronaut class. The Navy commander and test pilot has accumulated more than 3,500 flight hours in more than 40 aircraft.

The lifetime value of a liberal arts education and Albion’s well-established identity as an exemplary liberal arts college continue to resonate strongly, indicated in part by final fundraising totals for the 2018 fiscal year, which concluded June 30. “Every day I hear stories from alumni about the remarkable change that attending Albion brought to their lives, and many want to pay that forward,” said Bob Anderson, vice president for alumni relations and development. “Albion is clearly on the move up and our alumni and friends are making that possible.”

To paraphrase an old saying, Annika Markovich’s summer is water to drink—but that’s about it. “We get only one freshwater shower a week and there are no laundry machines, so everything is washed with salt water from the ocean,” the senior biology major says. “It was a large adjustment, but I got used to it. It is just a very different lifestyle than the one we live in the States.”