News Articles

It has been 50 years since the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed on a hotel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. But in that time of continued racial strife and turbulence, one thing remains clear: Albion’s story continues to be America’s story.

Several community champions and College boosters, including trustee Dr. Samuel Shaheen, ’88, will be on hand as Albion College celebrates its 2018 Commencement on Saturday, May 5, at 1 p.m. from the steps of Kresge Gymnasium on the College Quadrangle.

Albion College’s Anthropology Department has a new teaching tool thanks to the campus 3-D printing of a 300,000-year-old Homo nadeli skull that may well change what we know about the history of the species on our planet

A watershed chapter of Albion College’s history inspired an audience of colleagues, students and friends, as professors Judy Locker, Barbara Keyes and Mary Collar presented the 2018 Anna Howard Shaw Keynote on March 27. Along with memories of the campus climate in the 1970s and 1980s, the three recalled the establishment of women’s studies on campus and its impact, then and now.

Moving to Tanzania, Cindy (Cardwell) Fast, ’08, expected to see a lot of new sights—but one related to her expertise was especially surprising. “At our land mine training center, every single rat developed this behavior of trotting behind their trainer without any signaling or harnesses attached,” marvels Fast (on right in photo, alongside colleague Kate Sears Webb, ’16). “The rats aren’t trained to do this and are literally free to go wherever they want, but they choose to scurry along behind their trainer.”

Sarah Mondale’s film about the tough questions facing public education, schools of choice and charter schools is making the rounds across the country and around the world, and now it will be shown in Albion—on Wednesday, March 21, at 7 p.m. at the downtown Bohm Theatre. Its message, she believes, resonates with everyone.

Renowned psychologist and author Dacher Keltner and Los Angeles First Lady Amy Elaine Wakeland, ’91, will present the Joseph S. Calvaruso Keynote Address and the Elkin R. Isaac Alumni Lecture, respectively, as part of the 2018 Elkin R. Isaac Student Research Symposium, Albion College’s annual two-day celebration of student research and scholarship. Wakeland speaks Wednesday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Norris Center’s Towsley Lecture Hall, while Keltner concludes the symposium Thursday, April 19, at 7 p.m. in Goodrich Chapel.

Events going from history to hot topics mark this year’s Women’s History Month celebrations at Albion College. These events, which begin March 15, are free and open to the public.

Rick Straughen, ’03, thought he was going into a career as a computer programmer. But he changed his mind at Albion College and is now impacting the lives of high school students in Michigan’s Utica Community Schools as an award-winning computer science and math teacher.

Eight Britons will be honored at an event on Friday, April 20, in Upper Baldwin Hall—four will receive the College’s Distinguished Alumni Award, and four will receive the College’s Young Alumni Award.