Showing posts with label Lewis Batts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lewis Batts. Show all posts

Monday, June 27, 2016

KALAMAZOO COLLEGE







The tower of Stetson Chapel.
(Photo provided by Kalamazoo College.)
Last week I returned to the small liberal arts college in Michigan where I spent four of the finest years of my life. Happily, the main quadrangle looks much the same as when I was in school, with a picturesque chapel at the top of a hill.  I felt at home immediately.


Launched in the early nineteenth century as the Michigan and Huron Institute, Kalamazoo’s fledgling college was officially a secular school, but with its first trustees and many faculty members being staunch Baptists, the denomination’s  influence was unambiguous, and remained so for a long time. [i] Kalamazoo College (“K”) has steadily produced Baptist ministers and teachers for many years.
During the years leading up to the Civil War, “K” acquired a heroic couple, President James Stone and his wife, Lucinda Hinsdale Stone (who ably taught women students for twenty years with no salary). Abolitionists and supporters of women’s rights as well as being good liberal Baptists, the Stones were admired and beloved by their students, but had many enemies on and off campus. They were thought to be far too liberal—Lucinda read The Atlantic and expected her students to read Byron’s poetry!—in a town that even today is very conservative. Finally, faced with financial difficulties related to a national depression and with accusations of personal immorality (which were  fabricated by their enemies), the Stones resigned.
A long, dark period in the college’s history followed. Along with the rest of the country, the school suffered through the Civil War. Though Baptist churches and benefactors continued to support it, there never was enough money for the expansion that was occurring in many colleges. “K” seems to have slogged valiantly through the end of the nineteenth century, steadily providing a classic education to a small number of loyal students.
In spite of many difficulties, over the years a dedicated faculty became extremely successful in producing graduates with strong liberal arts backgrounds. Many of them went on to become scientists; in the 1952 book The Origins of American Scientists[ii], the authors stated that “K” was third among the 50 top-ranking schools whose graduates went on to earn Ph.D.s in the sciences.
Like most colleges and universities, “K” has had both excellent and poor leaders. One of the outstanding ones was President Allen Hoben, who originated the phrase “a fellowship in learning” during the twenties to describe “K"'s collegial spirit, in which faculty and students thrived by a sort of symbiosis. Hoben and most of the faculty actually lived on campus, creating a familial atmosphere.
When I matriculated in 1954, the Baptist relationship was still obvious; many of the students I knew came from Baptist families. We even were required to attend chapel services three times a week. My first job on campus was counting  chapel-attendance slips, under the hawk-eyed supervision of the dean of women.
Following a temporary influx of students on the G.I. Bill just after World War II, the school had shrunk somewhat in size and reputation, but that would soon change. We had a brand new president, Weimer K. Hicks (covertly but universally known as “Beaver,” because of his intensity), who was determined to build the school up in every way, and he succeeded. I first realized his determination early in my freshman year, when he literally backed me into a corner and suggested that I join the marching band that would be needed for Homecoming. He had checked every student’s records to find out which of us had played in high school bands, and of course he knew all our names and Achilles’ heels. There was no escaping Dr. Hicks, especially for those of us who depended on scholarships. I joined the band.
Majoring in biology, I was greatly influenced by two great teachers, H. Lewis Batts and Frances Diebold. Batts taught an excellent freshman class as well as advanced classes in ornithology and ecology. In later years he would found the Kalamazoo Nature Center. “Dieb” was already an institution herself, having taught at the school since the early twenties.  She tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific findings (Watson and Crick had just published their seminal paper on the DNA helix) and to impart them to us, but what I remember most from her classes is her emphasis on the history and philosophy of biology. That has stayed with me through the years, while I studied and forgot many of the more specialized aspects of biology in my graduate work. Batts, “Dieb,” and many other teachers gave me a fine education.
Under Hicks’s aegis, during the sixties a foreign study program was inaugurated—how I wish it had been in place when I was a student!—that has led to a year abroad for most “K” students. Foreign study was a third of what was dubbed the “K Plan.”  All students were expected to spend time abroad, to become interns in fields where they might want to pursue careers, and to plan and carry out a Senior Individualized Project. The K Plan, now renowned and imitated nationally, has resulted in students’ greater self reliance and readiness to begin years of work and service. As one example, “K” produces more Peace Corps volunteers per capita than any other institution.  Even today, there are some trustees and other Baptists involved with “K,” although officially it is not affiliated with any religion.
Though the original campus still looks very familiar to me, it is obvious from alumni publications that much about the school has changed, and mostly for the better. For the past ten years President Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, a dynamic African-American woman, has led the school. The student body now comprises a wide variety of races, religions, and nationalities, in great contrast to the nearly all-white Christian group I knew in the fifties. The Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership was opened to great fanfare a few years ago; in keeping with James and Lucinda Stones’ heritage, some townspeople have judged the architecture too modern, the philosophy too liberal. Today “K” is known as one of the most outstanding small colleges in the United States.
When I left to return to California, it was with great pride in my alma mater. I may never be on the campus again, but will always stay in touch with my old friends and read alumni publications. “K” was a good school in the fifties, is even better today, and no doubt will continue to grow in excellence in the future.





[i] Much of this historical information is based on A Fellowship in Learning: Kalamazoo College, 1833–2008, by Marlene Crandell Francis. Kalamazoo: Kalamazoo College, 2008. Any snarky comments, mistakes, and misinterpretations are my own.


[ii] Knapp, R.H. and H.B. Goodrich. The Origins of American Scientists. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.