News

Award-winning author Rita Williams-Garcia used personal experiences and her great gift of storytelling to help Albion celebrate the end of its 2016 community Big Read on November 1.

One by one, they came up to the blue and red sign with the words “Albion Chooses Love” and signed it. From longtime community members to college students to children, the signatures were a thunderous message and a definitive answer to an incident that stunned and galvanized the Albion community. “These symbols speak loud,” Rev. Donald Phillips of the Albion Ministerial Association and chaplain of Albion College told the gathered crowd. “But we’re coming together as a community to speak louder.”

President Mauri Ditzler’s email to the Albion College community about the vandalism on Superior Street.

Sydney Roeder, ’17, was able to tap into her passion for the Middle East thanks to the Kim Tunnicliff Endowment and studied for an academic year in Jordan. While there, she began learning Arabic and helped develop projects like a model farm and hiking trails. She recently made a campus presentation of her work and made it clear her job has just begun.

The new Randi C. Heathman Indoor Arena was formally unveiled at Homecoming in an October 15 ribbon-cutting ceremony. The riding surface was enlarged, new powerful fans were installed and a new, state-of-the-art surface was laid down. And now, the center aims to become, in time, one of the premier equestrian facilities in the country.

“Not only were they champions on the football field, but these men went on to become champions to me in my life,” writes Detroit dentist Darrell Williams, ’77 about the 1976 Britons. “On December 5, 2014, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Needless to say this news took my wife and me by surprise, as it does most people, and it shook us to our very being. We were devastated, but we knew that a battle would have to be fought to overcome this disease.”

The dream became reality on a sun-splashed Friday afternoon in downtown Albion. A renovated building at 101 N. Superior St., which in former incarnations was a furniture store and a thrift store (among other things), has new life after it was dedicated as the Ludington Center, in front of a crowd of around 100 people.

“I have always been interested in both sciences and arts, but I could never find a way of combining my two passions,” writes Liliya Chernysheva, ’19. “Choosing just one path always seemed to me like a terrible mistake. So it was great, this past summer, to work with math professor Dave Reimann on a mathematical art research project.”

Lawrence Schook, ’72, heads a world-class cancer research lab that includes interventional radiologists, oncologists, mouse researchers and a host of other medical professionals. This summer, Schook’s team also included Albion students Nickolas Kinachtchouk, ’19, and Jordan Newson, ’17, who found they could contribute to Schook’s breakthrough approach to a cure for liver cancer.

Albion College received “Video of the Year” honors from the Association of Donor Relations Professionals during its annual international conference last week in Pittsburgh. The three-minute video, produced by BluFish Consulting in Marshall, highlighted three Albion students—Candace Cullens, Jordan Herron and Bailey Beem (all from the Class of 2016)—who spoke movingly about their ability to complete their undergraduate education at Albion thanks to the support from scholarships.