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My job was to cry. I was to go up to the nearest foreign service officer and start bawling uncontrollably about my dying brother in the United States who I had to see just one last time. The officer’s job? To decide whether or not to approve my visa.

Earlier this summer, 12 Albion College students and two staff members attended the National Conference for College Women Student Leaders at the University of Maryland, College Park. The conference, organized by the national office of the American Association of University Women, has a legacy of more than 30 years and annual attendance of about 1,000 participants from around the country and world.

A recent significant grant from the Charles J. Strosacker Foundation, based in Midland, Mich., will thoroughly enhance the day-to-day experience of Albion College student-athletes and coaches for many years to come. The $500,000 awarded by the Foundation earlier this summer will go toward a complete update of the weight room in the Dow Recreation and Wellness Center as well as a wall-to-wall renovation of four locker rooms serving eight different teams.

A crowd of hundreds convened on the Quad and on the roof of Palenske Hall to witness the first solar eclipse to cross the entire continental United States since 1918. In Albion, skygazers saw the moon cover nearly 90 percent of the sun for a couple of minutes during the nearly three-hour astronomical event.

The enrollment growth of the past two years continues in 2017 for Albion College, which welcomed nearly 570 new students at today’s Matriculation ceremony, 130 more than a year ago. Along with 525 first-year students, the College expects an additional 44 transfer students, an increase of more than 25 percent over last year, when classes begin on Monday, August 21.

Students learn a lot of interesting things while doing research, and Athena Balcoff, ’18, is no exception. “I found out you can order dead bees online,” she says. “I’m not really sure what other people use them for, but I wanted to use them for my art.”

The first total solar eclipse to make its way across the length of the United States in 99 years is set for, coincidentally, the first day of the 2017 fall semester at Albion (August 21), and the College—with help from Antoniu Fodor, ’18 (left), and other students in the astronomy club, as well as the backing of physics professor and planetary scientist Nicolle Zellner—will chronicle it all.

Albion College has again been named one of the nation’s top undergraduate educational institutions with its inclusion in The Princeton Review’s new 2018 edition of its college guide, The Best 382 Colleges.

Final fundraising results for fiscal year 2017 indicate that alumni and friends of Albion College are expressing support for the College’s current direction—and what Albion sees for its future as one of America’s exemplary liberal arts institutions.

Mick McCabe, who spent 46 years carving out a special niche at the Detroit Free Press, didn’t attend Albion College. But his respect and love for the school runs deep nonetheless thanks to the fact that two of his kids graduated from Albion. And that’s why, at his retirement roast in May, McCabe earmarked the $3,500 in proceeds to Albion’s journalism program. “I really liked everything about Albion,” he said.