Dr. Matthew Schoene, assistant professor of sociology, was recently named director of Albion College’s First-Year Seminars program, a core part of the William Atwell Brown, Jr., and Mary Brown Vacin First-Year Experience (FYE), beginning with the 2020-21 academic year. Even as he spent much of the prior two months shifting from on-campus to online instruction, Schoene is looking forward to this next challenge.
The Board of Trustees of Albion College has elected Michael J. Harrington, ’85 (left), as its new chairman. The Indianapolis attorney and retired corporate executive will lead the 27-person board of the nationally recognized private four-year liberal arts college after serving as a trustee for eight years. He succeeds J. Donald Sheets, ’82, who joined the board in 2006, has served as chair for the past seven years, will continue to serve on the board as chair of the Finance Committee.
It turned out to be a perfect day for an Albion College Commencement that didn’t happen in Albion. Nonetheless, while Albion’s virtual Commencement, and virtual Honors Convocation the day before, didn’t include hugs, handshakes and proud parents with cameras, the events provided some special moments and unique memories.
Harim “Sunny” Kim, ’20, who will graduate in May with degrees in business and music, has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Mexico for 2020-21. A member of the Gerstacker and Ford institutes as well as the Brown Honors Program, Kim is Albion College’s 16th Fulbright recipient in the last 17 years.
A sociologist by training who officially joins Albion on July 1, the Carnegie Fellow is an international expert in the field of community engagement and brings from Brown University a passion for engaged scholarship and the public purpose of higher education.
Thomas Wilch, professor of geological sciences, has been teaching his Natural Disasters course for years, but this spring semester the class has taken on a very different, and all-too relatable, feel. And it’s led him to incorporate the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic into the syllabus—now and in the future. “It is,” Wilch says simply, “a teachable moment that every person on the planet is implicated in.”
In a New York Times op-ed co-written with Kathryn Sikkink of the Harvard Kennedy School, Albion College political science professor Carrie Booth Walling (left) wrote that it’s time for the United Nations Security Council to rise to the pandemic crisis and look to the Dominican Republic, which currently holds the UNSC presidency, as a global leader. They write that a decisive statement calling for working together can make all the difference: it would legitimize recent General Assembly decisions, reinforce the authority of the secretary-general, and strengthen the efforts of specialized UN agencies to save lives.
Albion College, one of the top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the country, announced today their new and substantial Michigan 2020 Promise will assist Michigan families who have college affordability concerns due to COVID-19.
After just three weeks, Albion College’s Web Series has established itself as a venue for alumni who want to get together—at least virtually. It has so far featured a discussion of April Fools’ Day and Albion pranksters, a virtual yoga workout, and a tour of two downtown eateries. And all of the events have been led by alumni.
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.
