President Donna Randall announced two appointments within Albion College’s top administration this summer.

Doug Kellar has been named Albion College’s vice president for enrollment, heading the College’s Admission and Financial Aid offices. He had served as the interim vice president during the 2007-08 academic year and was hired as associate vice president for enrollment at Albion in fall 2000.

"Doug Kellar has proven that he is the right person to lead our recruitment efforts as we strive to strengthen and diversify future incoming classes," Randall said.

"Colleges across the country are facing extraordinary challenges in recruitment and retention of students," she continued. "Doug brings the experience, confidence, and know-how that Albion needs in these uncertain times."

Albion will become more of a "global community" in the future, Kellar explained, which will be advantageous in attracting students.

"College is about opening minds and creating a better understanding of the world in which we live and the people with whom we interact," he said. "I believe that Albion will continue to enhance programs bringing a more diverse, worldly perspective to campus, while at the same time facilitating more opportunities for students to travel and explore outside of their comfort zones."

Kellar graduated with a B.A. from Muskingum College in 1986, and earned an M.B.A. from Western Michigan University in 2006. Prior to coming to Albion College, he served as Muskingum’s director of admissions from 1996 to 2000.

Joshua Merchant, ’96, has been appointed vice president for institutional advancement. In this role, Merchant will lead the areas of alumni/parent relations, major and planned gifts, corporate and foundation relations, the Albion Annual Fund, advancement services, and external communications. He most recently served as assistant vice president of advancement at Interlochen Center for the Arts in northern Michigan.

"Josh Merchant’s experience in fundraising and alumni engagement at two major state universities and at Interlochen will serve him well as Albion’s vice president for institutional advancement," President Randall said. "He will be an energetic and enthusiastic leader for our advancement team."

Merchant joined the Interlochen staff in April 2007, and had primary responsibility for overseeing donor relations and stewardship, information technology, advancement services, regional major gifts, and the annual fund. Under his leadership, annual fund contributions increased by more than 30 percent, and donor participation increased by 48 percent.

"It has been a great pleasure and honor to join Albion College," Merchant said. "I am enjoying bringing my skills and experience to strengthen a respected college that is rich with tradition and opportunity."

Prior to his appointment at Interlochen, Merchant served as senior director of development at Central Michigan University’s College of Business Administration, and as director of major gifts at Michigan State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. In these roles, he was involved in major capital campaigns and coordinated external relations activities.

Merchant was a member of the Albion College Alumni Association Board of Directors for five years, serving as president from 2006 until his appointment as vice president for institutional advancement.

He holds a master’s degree in extension education from Michigan State University and is a Ph.D. candidate in higher education leadership at Western Michigan University.

Ask for a Convertible is the intriguing title of a newly published collection of short stories by Danit Brown, assistant professor of English. The book explores the life of heroine Osnat Greenberg, who has an American father and Israeli mother, and "what it means to be Israeli, to be American, or to be a little bit of both." The book spans two decades in Osnat’s life, as she maneuvers through two seemingly incompatible places she calls home, the U.S. and Israel. Like her protagonist, a teenaged Brown moved to Michigan from Israel.

Critic Julianna Baggott, comparing Brown’s writing to that of novelists Gish Jen and Philip Roth, called Ask for a Convertible "a brilliant debut." Baggott said, "Danit Brown pushes into new terrain and claims this hybrid land as her own."

The book was published earlier this year by Pantheon.

Deborah Kanter’s study of gender, family, and community in rural Mexico during the 18th and 19th centuries, Hijos del Pueblo, will be published in early 2009 by the University of Texas Press. In conducting her research, Kanter, associate professor of history, drew on the judicial records from central Mexico’s Toluca region which she has studied since 1989. At the national archives in Mexico City, she pored over dusty bundles of civil and criminal cases dating back to the 1740s and containing lively details of everyday life in rural Mexico. She then reconstructed the lives of native women and men, their Spanish neighbors, and others in this agrarian society. Her book considers questions of identity and power in the evolution of Latin America.

Hijos del Pueblo is "an exceptionally important contribution to the scholarly literature in Mexican history, culture, and gender studies," said John Tutino, a historian at Georgetown University.