Feature

On a cold March day, Alejandra Rodriguez Wheelock ’17 arrives right on time for her Writing Lab appointment with Kevin Crim, Writing Lab assistant and lecturer. She grins, shrugs out of her backpack and coat, and hands Kevin draft number four of her essay, “The Basic Principles of Long-Distance Running,” for Dean Bakopoulos’s course in creative nonfiction.

Kevin and Ale (pronounced “Allie”) sit side by side at a table piled high with books. Through the tall windows of Kevin’s office — northeast corner of Alumni Recitation Hall (ARH), ground floor — they could see bare sycamore branches and leaden sky, but they pay no mind. Their attention is on Ale’s essay.

“I’m happy with the content,” Ale says. The essay has been workshopped in class, and Kevin has responded to content and structure in earlier appointments. “I want to review the editing.” 

Kevin nods and begins to read aloud, exactly as the piece is written, so Ale can hear for herself where a word may not be the best choice — a “this” rather than “the,” “through” instead of “across.” Ale is from Guatemala and English is not her first language.

He reads, “I felt the hospital.”

Ale stops him. “Okay, left,” she says, and he notes the change on her draft. 

Kevin reads with a pen in hand, following each line. He reacts as a reader and notes problems — all are minor at this stage of her draft. 

Teaching one-on-one

“I like to hear my own voice,” Crim jokes when asked why he reads each student’s work aloud. 

In fact, it’s emblematic of the kind of work the Writing Lab staff does day in and day out — helping students learn to recognize problems in their own work and figure out solutions. 

“Our model is one-to-one tutoring,” says Janet Carl, director of the lab, “and that’s what we do most of and that seems very effective. One person giving you everything they’ve got in terms of feedback, and conversation, and respect, and support. That’s a good deal for a writer.

“It’s really become a major part of the way the College teaches writing,” Carl says, “although certainly we believe we’re working fully in partnership with the faculty. It’s not the primary source of instruction at the College, but it is a major resource that this College offers.”

The way the Writing Lab approaches the teaching of writing — primarily individual appointments with students who are coming in because they want to — fits neatly with Grinnell’s individualized approach to education. 

But it wasn’t exactly planned that way.

A casual beginning

In the late 1960s, like many other colleges and universities, the Grinnell College faculty voted to eliminate the core and distribution requirements and adopt an individually advised curriculum. This took the onus of teaching writing off the instructors of Humanities 101, which had been a required course. 

Then, says Waldo Walker, professor emeritus of biology, they all realized: “Oh my god, we’re not teaching students to write anymore.” 

The First-Year Tutorial, which had been pilot-tested but was not yet required, became the only required course. As a result, the responsibility for teaching writing spread across the curriculum, but not all faculty members were comfortable teaching students how to write. 

Walker, who was dean at the time, set up summer writing seminars for faculty teaching the tutorial. “It worked,” he says. 

But students don’t typically learn to be good writers from a single course or a single semester. “I needed a couple people we could refer students to,” Walker says. He knew two faculty spouses, Jan Irving and Linda Finton Morris ’61, who had expertise in writing. (Morris went on to get her doctorate in English and teach at the University of California-Davis.) Then Walker asked Mathilda Liberman to help out. 

“[He] asked me to meet with a few of the students one by one to discuss their writing problems,” Liberman says. “One or two resident advisers were assigned to help me, part-time. We met with our students in one room or another. It was all very casual, unstructured.” 

The Writing Lab came to fruition in 1973. 

“I had no vision of the Writing Lab,” Liberman says. “In fact, I expected it to be canceled almost right away, but Dean Walker had plans for our future.” 

“Mathilda shaped the lab,” says Betty Moffett, who was hired as a Writing Lab assistant in 1973, became the director in 1998, and retired in 2000. “She made the lab respectable. She had the admiration of every faculty member that I know of. I think she kept the Writing Lab from being a second-class citizen. She raised its status so people respected the work we were doing and the people who were doing it.”

Staffed by professionals 

One way Grinnell’s Writing Lab stands out compared to writing centers at other colleges, although it is not unique, is in the use of professional staff. The staff grew over time to five full-time people with expertise in writing and teaching writing. 

Many of them stayed for years and years. For example, Kevin Crim retired in May 2016 with 41 years under his belt.

Judy Hunter, director from 2000 to 2011 with 38 years total at the lab, worked with Crim her entire career. “His ability to grasp the whole import of where the student is trying to go and then help them is kind of amazing. I loved watching his appointments. I learned so much from him.”

Augmented by students

In recent years, partly due to demand for more services, the lab has begun training students as writing mentors, a project Hunter initiated. Mentors are nominated by professors, attend the class they serve and meet with students outside of class to offer feedback. The writing mentors also take a two-credit course taught by Carl on the teaching of writing.

Katherine Tucker ’16, a writing mentor her senior year for two different sociology courses, says, “I would try to get a sense of what the student was trying to convey regardless of what I was reading on the paper.” The temptation for mentors, she says, is to fall into editing mode versus a more global perspective. “I always had to pay attention to what the professor was looking for.”

Using the resources at hand

Some students may feel a sense of shame at needing help with their writing. 

Carl says, “I hope students don’t feel that faculty would think less of them because they use the Writing Lab. In my experience, the opposite is true.”

The Writing Lab is “a place that a lot of students don’t find, unfortunately,” Hunter says. “But many students, when they do find it, find it a place of support and one-on-one interaction and friendly people that they maintain relationships with. I still have students I’m in touch with.”

Carl adds, “Success is really linked to using the resources at hand. People who are successful are people who use the resources.”

Ale Rodriguez Wheelock ’17 is the perfect example. The essay she was working on with Crim, “The Basic Principles of Long-Distance Running,” won the James Norman Hall 1910 Aspiring Writer Award last spring. 

I remember one young Chinese man who had gone to a very good high school in Nanjing, and he was not used to getting anything lower than very, very top grades. He had a tutorial with Mark Montgomery, who for that time was marking his papers in green ink because red looks like blood and green looks like growth. 

This young man came into my office one day just mad. Just mad. He said, “Look at this. I want to write Mr. Montgomery a letter.”

I said, “Let’s think about this for a minute.”

He said, “There’s green ink all over. This has never happened to me before.” In a few minutes, he said, “I’m calm now. But I still want to write Mr. Montgomery a letter.”

I said, “Okay, as long as you let me read over your shoulder.”

He agreed. “Dear Prof. Montgomery. Give me more green writing. You have not crushed me.”

That young man did very, very well at Grinnell College.

– Betty Moffett

Zander: Inspiration’s a real thing. If I get it at home, I’ll try to write it out or sketch it out, but you can’t do a whole comic on inspiration alone.

Kevin: Unless you want to make the leap to go pro, it’s good to have a day job so you can just do the cartoons you want. There’s no pressure. You can experiment. You can fail. Failing is key number one.

Zander: Whenever you plan on doing one thing, do three. The first one you do is so lousy that immediately you think about going into the next one so you can fix all those mistakes.

Zander: Doing Web comics is so helpful to people, because the specifics of print are a little outdated and a little irrelevant to the skills. Let’s just do the panels, throw them up online, and see what people think.

Kevin: You put something online and things are either faved or not faved pretty quickly. It’s like you tap the vein of your audience faster and in a more immediate sense than print.

Last fall, black students at dozens of colleges across the country protested against racial discrimination on their campuses, including demonstrations at Yale University, Claremont McKenna College, and Ithaca College. The most high-profile protests were held at the University of Missouri, which led to the ousting of Tim Wolfe, president of the University of Missouri system.

As black youth organize via Black Lives Matter to speak out against police brutality, our nation finds itself amid a new civil rights movement. As it spreads, black student organizations have become lightning rods for controversy on college campuses, and Grinnell College has been no different.

In early 2015, racist slurs were posted anonymously on the social media app Yik Yak, specifically targeting black students on campus. In addition to calling for the disbanding of Grinnell College’s black student organization Concerned Black Students (CBS), messages harassed black student leaders by name. One post called a black student a “spear chucker”; another accused “blacks” of “ruining Grinnell.”

“The dominant narrative is that Grinnell is this great liberal place, that we’re all into social justice, that we’re a post-racial society,” says Alexandra Odom ’16, house monitor for the Conney M. Kimbo Black Cultural Center this past year. “But black students see the opposite side of this; we are often confronted with really conservative racist ideas projected on us. The school is radical until it comes to issues of race and black people.”

She adds: “I’ve had some of the best times in my life on this campus, but also some of the worst.”

As it has for almost 50 years, CBS serves as a home for black students during controversies big and small. It has also been a powerful vehicle for getting the administration and the Grinnell College community at large to consider a black perspective.

Origin story

Black students at Grinnell formed CBS in the fall of 1967 after hearing Martin Luther King Jr. speak at the college.

“We were just so inspired by Dr. King,” says Frank Thomas ’71, an administrator at the College for many years. “Plus, in ’67 there were a lot of things going on nationally — black student unions were forming in various colleges around the country, and there was a lot of unrest in various cities. So, the students at Grinnell, though not particularly ‘militant,’ still had concerns. We felt we needed to do something.”

Not much happened that fall, but the need to “do something” intensified in the spring of ’68 when King was assassinated in April. Before his assassination, multiple black students and faculty reported being verbally harassed and threatened with physical harm in town, according to The Scarlet & Black. Town-gown relations got so bad that a Grinnell College student, Lou Kelley ’68, was attacked and beaten up in his dorm room by a Grinnell townsperson. “The baddest black guy on campus was harassed and beaten up, so that was the impetus for us to decide, look, we’re really not safe around here,” Thomas says. King’s murder was the final straw, and black students got serious about organizing.

But things were relatively quiet until 1971, when black students chained the doors to Burling Library and locked themselves inside. The S&B reported that during the takeover, which lasted from 7:15 a.m. until 12:30 p.m., no white people, with the exception of a few administrators, including then-President Glenn Leggett, were admitted to the library. The chained doors were adorned with posters featuring such slogans as “Do You Deny Us As Black People The Right To Be Free?” and “We Are An American People Proud Of Our Blackness: We Want To Express Ourselves And Our Blackness In Our Academic Life On This Campus.”

Leggett met with a group of about 10 black CBS members in the president’s office, which was inside Burling at that time. CBS presented him with its “black manifesto,” a list of 10 demands designed to improve campus life for black students and faculty. Demands included boosting black student enrollment to “no less than 200” and establishing a larger black cultural center, a black library in Burling, and a black studies major.

“Campus opinion was widely split on the issue, ranging from full support to unspeakable bitterness and a parody ‘manifesto,’” stated the May 15, 1973, special commencement issue of The S&B. “CBS held meetings with students and trustees clarifying its position and undertook extensive negotiating sessions with the administration.”

Many goals of CBS’s “black manifesto” have not been realized — there still aren’t 200 black students on campus. Current students still contend the campus sees its share of racial unrest. So the question remains: What has been gained through CBS’s efforts?

Recruiting black students

Following the Burling takeover, Leggett, along with the trustees, agreed to establish a black studies major and an admissions board for black students. They also agreed to give black students space in the form of the Conney M. Kimbo Black Cultural Center, which has been affectionately called “The House” over the years.

However, the Black Admissions Board was doomed from the start. The faculty dissolved it in 1976 after the College received a letter from the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare indicating that a separate black admissions board was “unacceptable.” Students were promised that the general admissions board would be sensitive to black needs, according to The S&B.

Over the years, Grinnell College has had varying levels of success in recruiting black students to campus, but it still isn’t known as a destination school. For example, it failed to rank on Essence magazine’s recent list of the 50 best colleges for African Americans, while similar private liberal arts colleges such as Amherst, Wellesley, and Williams (all in Massachusetts) made the cut. According to Amherst, for example, black students composed 10 percent of first-year students this past year, the lowest it has been in the past few years. In comparison at Grinnell, average black enrollment has hovered at about 6 percent since 2003.

According to the latest figures from Grinnell’s Office of Analytic Support and Institutional Research, during the 2015–16 academic year there were 96 African American students at Grinnell, who overall made up 5.6 percent of the student body. In 2014, the College for the first time reached a 100-student milestone. That may not seem like much, but Grinnell has never had a big black student population — in 1998, which had the lowest population of African American students in the past 25 years, there were only 35 black students.

“There were fewer than 30 of us when we formed CBS,” Thomas recalls. “As an organization, it was really important for us to be there to support current black students, but also to call for increased enrollment of black students.”

According to Joe Bagnoli, vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid, the College has made great strides toward increasing those numbers. On staff is a coordinator of multicultural recruitment, and each year the admission office revisits its goals and strategies for the enrollment of underrepresented students.

“We have a nationwide recruitment strategy with a special focus on [African American and Latino] populations,” he says. “Our outreach efforts include targeted school visits and building relationships with CBOs [community-based organizations]. And we underwrite the costs associated with trips to campus for underrepresented students to ensure that cost is not an impediment to the campus visit for domestic students of color who may be living in lower-income households.”

Those efforts have recently yielded an unprecedented number of applicants, Bagnoli says. This year almost 50 percent of the College’s domestic applicants identified as students of color. Additionally, domestic students of color currently make up almost 25 percent of the student body.

But Bagnoli admits that because of federal mandates that would discourage the College from identifying quotas, they address recruitment in terms of promoting broader diversity rather than focusing on how to specifically increase numbers of black students.

“We’re not just talking about [black students] as a group,” he said. “We’re talking about them as representative of various underrepresented students within that broader category. So, black students are often a part of our conversation. Latino students are often a part of our conversation, as well as first-generation college students and Pell-eligible students.”

Posse impact

Recently, Grinnell College President Raynard S. Kington announced that the College was severing ties with the Posse Foundation. Grinnell had partnered with Posse since 2003, and it has been a significant source of black students for the College. In 2015, there were a total of 33 black Posse Scholars, making up 27 percent of black domestic students.

The Posse Foundation works to discover public high school students across racial groups with extraordinary academic and leadership potential, many of whom might be overlooked in a traditional college selection process. Once those Posse Scholars have been identified, they receive four-year, full-tuition scholarships to one of the organization’s partner schools.

“Posse has helped us to pursue our goals for diversity and student success and grow as a diverse institution,” Kington said in a statement. “Posse Scholars have brought great energy and student leadership to campus and given us a good sense of what close faculty-student mentoring can achieve. As we plan for the future we will seek to incorporate those ideas into our planning and engage Posse scholars and alumni in it.”

The decision caused a furor both on campus and in the alumni community. A letter signed by hundreds was sent to the administration asking for clarity on the memo announcing the decision.

“More troublingly for us, the memo provides very little insight into how the College will continue to recruit excellent students from urban areas and support these students. The memo alludes to a ‘more comprehensive approach to achieving our goals for diversity,’ but it fails to explain what this approach entails and does not specify the nature of the goals,” the letter read.

Bagnoli says he understands the frustration, but that the College is moving in the right direction in terms of getting more students of color on campus.

“When we entered into a relationship with the Posse Foundation, we were having a much more difficult time trying to attract the attention of underrepresented populations of all kinds,” he says. “Fast-forward to an applicant pool of over 7,300 students in 2016, when almost half of those domestic applicants are from students of color.”

He adds: “The Posse Foundation has provided Grinnell access to 20 finalists in two cities. We have loved getting to know the Posse finalists. They’re great people. But they now represent a small fraction of the total pool of underrepresented students who apply for admission. So, by virtue of an agreement that we reached over a decade ago, the seats we reserve for them are off-limits to a growing population of other talented applicants who don’t have the same opportunity to be considered for admission. Eventually, it leads to the question: Is there equity in the admission process? And it is increasingly difficult to answer that in the affirmative.”

Helping black students succeed

CBS has also done its share in helping to keep black students on campus once they’ve arrived. Grinnell formally tracks first- and second-year retention, which was 100 percent for black students in 2014. The most recent four-year graduation rates are 81 percent for black students, compared with 84 percent for white students.

For many of the more than 30 alumni interviewed for this story, being a member of CBS was key to thriving at Grinnell — and beyond.

“I joined CBS to expand my support network within the black community to better position myself for success in the classroom, in a predominately white community, [in] my profession of choice, and life after Grinnell,” says Darryl Dejuan Roberts ’98. “Being in CBS also provided a support system, which was essential to my survival at Grinnell, and it provided me with leadership opportunities, which gave me the confidence to participate in other campus organizations.”

For many students of color on campus, daily macro- and micro-aggressions can be an additional burden. These range from big assumptions that black students are only accepted to Grinnell because of affirmative action to smaller slights like comments about the texture of African American hair.

“If I listed all the micro- and macro-aggressions that I endured as a student, it’d be a long list,” says April Dobbins ’99. “It got to a point where it was literally making me crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I do have fond Grinnell memories, but to say that I fought to get to the other side of all the negative would be an accurate description.”

Dobbins did not originally join CBS. But being a black kid on a predominantly white campus took its toll.

“Honestly, I avoided CBS like the plague my first two years at Grinnell. It seemed like a really tight-knit group, and I didn’t want to try to get into their circle,” she says. “I came to Grinnell pretty exhausted from being bullied by other black kids all through high school for not being black enough. I was naive and I underestimated the need for CBS on campus. After being at Grinnell for two years, I came back from study abroad in London, and I just needed CBS. I needed a place where I didn’t have to explain my hair or certain struggles on campus. I needed a place [like The House] where I could watch Poetic Justice or something and not have to have a big dialogue. I found my spot there.”

Multiculturalism debates

For black students used to being both invisible and hypervisible on campus, becoming a part of CBS was a way to get their distinct voices heard. Over the years, black students tried to become a part of the conversation by advocating for a black perspective in the curriculum.

Starting in 1980, Grinnell began to offer “a special nonmajor program” in Afro-American studies. By the time the ’90s rolled around, though, the concentration suffered due to a lack of classes, faculty, and enrollment. At the same time, racial tension was ratcheted up on campus. It was then that students demanded that an African American Studies concentration be launched and a black faculty member be hired to helm it.

In 1995 student organizations of color, including Asian Students in Alliance (ASIA) and Student Organization of Latinas/os (SOL), lobbied the College for physical space in which to hold meetings and cultural events. While black students already had The House, CBS decided to lend its support to these groups.

Some white students were very unhappy about it. In 1995 The S&B published a column written by a student, a senior editor, claiming minority faculty were unqualified and that the College’s efforts to promote multiculturalism fostered reverse racism and segregation. “The College also pursues an ambitious affirmative action employment program at all levels of hiring with little regard to the quality of the candidate or actual cultural contributions he or she might make,” the column said, concluding: “Grinnell is degrading into a racial battleground. Minorities are arguing over who deserves houses and departments while the administration points pridefully at the number of colored sanitation workers and calls the school multicultural.”

Kesho Scott, associate professor of American studies and sociology, took issue with being called unqualified and wrote a letter to the editor in response: “I take your insults personally, for while I uphold freedom of speech, it becomes problematic when it is used to slander, especially when such slander is not based on any factual information; for example, there are no ‘colored sanitation workers’ employed by this institution, unless of course you were reducing those of us who teach here to sanitation workers.”

Racial tensions continued to escalate. First there was an incident at a basketball game where students used racial slurs and then, separately, two disc jockeys from KDIC were suspended after they used the n-word on the air. In response to these events, CBS staged a demonstration. Black students wore all black, taped their mouths shut, and stood in the back of their morning class with signs explaining they were protesting racial tension on campus. “Many [white] students were both shocked and offended by the demonstration, which was not widely understood,” according to The S&B.

But for black and other students of color, the protest was seen as an effort to talk about racial issues on campus that they dealt with on a daily basis. “That article kind of had like a Trump effect. It set off a lot of stuff that was simmering beneath the surface,” says Roberts. “Then we had the KDIC DJ using the n-word over the air. All these little incidents began to add up. It was almost like they ignited a fire and pulled the covers back to expose some things that had been going on on campus. Some white students felt it was acceptable to say things that were very hurtful and racially motivated, and we wanted to challenge that.”

After the protest was staged, CBS led campuswide discussions, as well as discussions with the administration. As a result, the College established an Africana studies concentration and hired Katya Gibel Mevorach, professor of anthropology, to head the now-defunct program, which lasted six years.

Black studies history

Grinnell first began its foray into black studies in 1969 when it introduced “a special upper-class general education program” called African and Afro-American studies, similar to concentrations today, but with a much lower credit requirement (16). The program ended in 1971, according to Jason Maher, registrar of the College.

Members of CBS lobbied for the creation of a black studies major in the “black manifesto,” and College administrators responded by establishing an interdisciplinary major in black studies in 1972. It was a 36-credit major and included courses in anthropology, economics, English, history, music, political science, and sociology. The major was discontinued in 1979 due to lack of interest. At the time, The S&B reported that just 10 students graduated with majors in black studies from 1972 to 1979.

After the protest in 1995, Grinnell introduced an interdisciplinary concentration in Africana studies in 1997, replacing the largely ignored Afro-American studies program that was launched in 1980. For the first time, the program had dedicated introductory and seminar-level coursework, Maher says.

But despite bringing on board Gibel Mevorach, who created a nationwide conference and brought numerous and varied speakers to campus, the concentration was never very popular with students and was discontinued in 2005. From 1999 to 2005, there were a total of 20 students who graduated with an Africana studies concentration. In comparison, the very popular gender, women’s, and sexuality studies (GWSS) concentration had 124 concentrators from 2000 to 2012. The program was so popular that it was turned into a major in 2010 that has since seen 87 majors graduate.

Africana studies wasn’t so fortunate. After seeing zero interest in upper-level Africana courses and limited interest in introductory classes, the faculty, including Gibel Mevorach and Scott, suggested dissolving Africana studies as an interim move toward something more comprehensive.

“The administration had nothing to do with this decision. This was not a problem of not enough faculty to teach a course — there were no students,” Gibel Mevorach says. “GWSS absorbed most students of color interested in diversity who were interested, as well, in gender studies; and more than a few potential recruits were sociology majors.”

Following last year’s Yik Yak incidents, black students in CBS once again began advocating for the establishment of an Africana studies concentration, despite the tumultuous history of black studies at Grinnell. “This is an issue of institutional amnesia,” Gibel Mevorach says.

In light of this history, some students are unsure if a new major is the best way to proceed. Some alumni say advocating for more black faculty might be a better way forward.

“There have been huge things we’ve accomplished since ’67. CBS’s activism has profoundly influenced campus,” says Dixon Romeo ’16, one of CBS’s leaders last year, “Ultimately, though, I would much rather have a positive, healthy, and safe space for black students to support them academically and mentally until they graduate. Right now we’re trying to find a balance between these two things.”

CBS today

Shortly after the racist Yik Yak posts appeared last year, members of CBS met with President Kington and presented a list of demands, including the creation of a mentorship program with minority alumni and a hate crime/bias-motivated incident team, increased diversity training during New Student Orientation, and improvements to the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

Romeo says, “No one that we were meeting within the administration had any issues with supporting us. They were ready and willing to help.”

Since then, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been restructured. Lakesia Johnson, associate professor of gender, women’s and sexuality studies, was tapped as chief diversity officer to address diversity within the curriculum and help recruit and retain a diverse faculty. Leslie Turner Bleichner ’07 was hired as director of intercultural affairs and works directly with students on the cocurricular side. Yik Yak was also ultimately banned from campus.

Since Johnson and Bleichner were hired, the two have invigorated the Diversity Council, a board of students, faculty, and administrators. The Office of Intercultural Affairs is also developing a “diversity plan” to address some of these issues on campus. An early draft of the plan was released recently for feedback. It includes expanding the preorientation program for underrepresented students into a full first-year program; developing a local-host program to promote connections and ameliorate feelings of isolation for students; and increasing the number of staff who provide support for student success and diversity issues.

“I’m excited about the new structure because people are finally thinking strategically about the student-of-color experience at Grinnell,” Bleichner says. “We are finally getting the right combination of folks with the right skill sets who can help students really address what it means to be a student of color in the middle of Iowa.”

Following the Yik Yak incidents, CBS also helped to foster campuswide discussions to address what they feel is a hostile and unwelcoming climate, including an event last fall designed to show solidarity with students at the University of Missouri.

“The biggest issue we have is with white students who didn’t think the racist attacks were a big deal or who were defending what took place on Yik Yak,” Romeo says. “Our dialogue was not directed at the administration, but to white students on campus.”

Just like at Missouri, Romeo claimed the Yik Yak attacks were not isolated, but part of a larger pattern of racially charged incidents on campus.

“The Yik Yak incident was just the biggest one,” Romeo says. “Whenever people talk about this, they talk about it like it was just one incident. There were multiple incidents. Students were saying hateful things about CBS.”

For black students dealing with racist incidents like Yik Yak, joining CBS can be like grabbing a lifeline. In addition to providing them with the support to help them address the special challenges that go along with attending a predominantly white college, it also gives black students a unique and powerful voice on campus.

“After the Yik Yak scandal, we were in a room discussing our concerns with the president of the College and various deans within a week or two,” says Odom. “Whether or not people are satisfied with the outcomes, it is huge to know that we can begin these conversations. My hope is that CBS has helped to promote a campus culture that encourages transparency and honest communication between the students and the administration.”

“I felt like a complete failure at life. It was bad, and I didn't tell anybody for a really long time.”

— Amy Hagan Ketteran ’97

For years, Amy Hagan Ketteran ’97 seemed to have everything all figured out. A successful muralist and business owner, she was making money doing work she loved, and she was teaching others to do the same. She was president of an international arts organization. She and her husband Mark Ketteran ’97 had a young child and another on the way.

And then the 2008 recession hit. Work dried up. Their credit card bills mounted, and the pair could no longer afford to pay their mortgage. Their electricity got shut off. They struggled just to buy food. “I felt like a complete failure at life,” Amy Ketteran says. “It was bad, and I didn’t tell anybody for a really long time.”

If the struggles that the Ketterans faced would have been difficult for anyone, Amy says that her Grinnell degree made the sting of their circumstances especially sharp. “I was supposed to be smart,” she says. “I felt like I wasn’t living up to what I should have done with my education.”

Grinnellians are bright, idealistic, and motivated to succeed. But they are not invincible. A poor decision, a health crisis, a divorce, or a series of unlucky breaks can derail Grinnellians with even the most promising paths ahead of them.

Facing real failures — setbacks that require us to recalibrate our expectations of ourselves or even the trajectory of our lives — can be heartbreakingly painful and disappointing. But they can also make us more empathetic, open us up to the generosity of others, and give us the opportunity to help others struggling with similar issues.

For Amy Ketteran, who is now working as a day care provider and whose family is still digging out from those rough years, a turning point came in 2014. After a frustrating morning, she posted about her struggles for the first time on Everyday Class Notes, a 4,000-alumni-strong Facebook group. “It felt weird, but I knew if I didn’t get it out, I would explode. I needed to talk to someone, and the only people I was going to see that day were under 6 years old.”

She returned to the post a few hours later to find hundreds of supportive responses. “People cared,” she says. “They were there, they were listening, and some of them said, ‘Yeah, my life’s not that great, either.’ I was crying. It made me feel not so by myself.”

Telling the stories and mining the lessons from our darkest moments — or simply the stretches that will never merit a classnote — won’t guarantee that we’ll make our way to some better-than-imagined future. But they can be a welcome counterbalance to the endless stream of upbeat Facebook posts and perfectly filtered Instagram photos that make everyone else’s lives seem flawless. And sharing our setbacks can remind anyone who is struggling that even in a sea of Grinnell success stories, they are not alone.

Climbing the wrong mountain

By all outward appearances, Christine Newkirk ’02 was a Grinnell success story. A strong student at Grinnell, she was thrilled when her adviser helped her line up a top-notch grad school and research opportunity in anthropology that included free tuition, a generous stipend, and the chance to do research in Brazil over several summers with funding from the National Science Foundation. “It was such a huge vote of confidence,” she says of her adviser’s support.

There was just one problem: She wasn’t particularly invested in the topic, cognitive anthropology. Still, it seemed to be the next obvious step in the trajectory of her career, which she assumed would include getting a Ph.D. and becoming a professor.

And Newkirk had always been good at meeting others’ expectations. “I was really driven to do well and get good grades,” she says. “But that didn’t always include thinking about my own opinions and ideas.”

The focus and drive she had honed to perfection at Grinnell weren’t enough to propel her all the way to a Ph.D. on a topic she didn’t love. She specifically remembers the moment it all came crashing down. On the night she arrived in Brazil for her third summer of research, she knew almost instantly that she’d made a terrible mistake. “I walked into the apartment, and I was bereft,” she recalls. “I just thought, ‘Oh, my God. What have I gotten myself into?’ ”

The next morning, after a run on the beach, she sat down on a wall that overlooked the ocean. As she looked out on the water, she understood with crystal clarity that she couldn’t do the research or the program she’d set out to do. “Even now,” she says, her voice breaking, “it’s still upsetting.”

After four years of grinding away at a topic she couldn’t connect with, Newkirk left her Ph.D. program. She worried that she had disappointed mentors who had believed in her, and she hated knowing she was no longer moving forward in the academic career she thought she wanted.

Since leaving the program, Newkirk has spent years working in nonprofits and mentoring teenagers through a variety of programs. In her role as a high school director at the Heart of Los Angeles, for example, she has particularly zeroed in on the high-achieving kids who seem more focused on garnering praise than finding a passion. “The advice I dispense to them is often about knowing yourself first and then figuring out how to apply yourself, rather than just being concerned about prestige and racking up accomplishment,” she says. “Don’t compare yourself to other people.”

Over the past few years, she has discovered what she is passionate about: education. Now, years later, Newkirk is applying to graduate schools in education, hoping to earn the Ph.D. that eluded her the first time around. She is now more certain in the direction she wants to go, but her previous experiences still weigh heavily on her. “You only live once, and you should go after what you want,” she says. “But the feeling of failure and shame still haunts me.”

Finding a home, and gratitude, in a quieter life

Many times, the lives we carve out for ourselves don’t match up with the grand plans Commencement speakers have dreamed up for us and veer far from even our own ideas of our lives’ trajectories after we graduate.

Alethea Drexler ’00 says she might not have had a clear vision of what awaited her after Grinnell, but she didn’t exactly envision her current life, in which she lives with her parents in a suburb just outside of Houston. She’s there for a complicated mix of reasons — among them, to support her aging parents and save on housing costs so she can live on her modest salary working in the historical archives of the Texas Medical Center. “I don’t have a job that will really support me in a big city. I don’t have a partner or family of my own,” she says. “All of the things that everyone seems to take for granted as cornerstones of life aren’t here.”

She knows she has many things to be grateful for: her health, a job she generally enjoys, parents she loves. Still, she sometimes wishes for a bigger life. “I should have pushed myself harder for my own sake and gotten that library degree, but I’ve lost the steam for it now,” she says. “It’s not as though I’m suffering, but my life is very quiet and small scale.”

Bill Turner ’87, meanwhile, admits he sometimes feels frustrated with his life, which looks little like what he had expected. After sailing through Grinnell and finishing his Ph.D. program almost effortlessly, complete with peer-reviewed and prize-winning papers, his ascent up the academic ladder seemed all but assured.

But after a series of one-year contracts and administrative positions at three universities, he stalled out. He went to law school and graduated, and found work on a legal history project he enjoyed. But it was short-lived. “The HIV that I had been ignoring for two years finally caught up to me, and I had to quit working,” he says. “I muddle along, and at the moment, I have one project I’m working on that may yet allow me to salvage a real life from the current mess. We shall see.”

And while he acknowledges that “we’re never supposed to admit failure,” he says he truly works at feeling gratitude for the good things in his life, including a stable family growing up, a strong education, and being gay, which he believes has allowed him to meet people and have experiences that would have been possible no other way.

A move from reaching up to reaching for each other

In the end, it may be perfectly Grinnellian to go off and change the world; but it is also perfectly Grinnellian to lead a messy, imperfect life. And if Grinnellians are known for their capacity for compassion, perhaps it is time to show some kindness to ourselves and to other Grinnellians. Sharing more honest stories about our own lives, messy and difficult as they are, is a start.

“It’s so hard, when you’re in the trenches, to see that there’s a way out,” says Amy Ketteran. “But if you can be honest about what’s happening to you, you never know who might be out there to help you out. Maybe they’ll just hold your hand for a minute. But sometimes that — just that — can make a difference.”

Big Time Attic, the Minneapolis cartooning studio where Zander Cannon ’95 and Kevin Cannon ’02 (no relation) forged their business partnership and later launched solo careers, is a little like your favorite bookstore, toy store, and coffee shop combined. It exudes fun and promises delight.

The evolution of Big Time Attic

Zander and Kevin founded Big Time Attic in 2004 with a third partner. “We thought if we teamed up as this three-part company we could basically be stronger as a unit than individuals,” Kevin says. “That’s when we immediately landed animation jobs with Cartoon Network and a project with Target. And really big stuff kept coming.”

After the animation partner left in 2007, Zander and Kevin focused on illustration and storyboarding.

“For the first seven or eight years, we would work exclusively together on every project,” Kevin says. “I consider those the golden days. We’d be physically across from each other at the table, physically passing pages back and forth.”

Looking at the work later, Zander says he often couldn’t tell whose work was whose.

“It was really good to spend five or six years doing whatever came across, especially adapting to technology,” Zander says. “When I started, computers were barely even a part of it. Everything was done on paper. I was shipping artwork that’s irreplaceable all over creation, hoping it gets there, hoping it gets back.

“It was nice for us to take on jobs that we never knew what we were going to get so we could adapt to that technology, learn a new skill, learn a new program.”

“I think 90 percent of the skills that I have now I was basically forced to learn on the fly over the last 10 years,” Kevin says. “That’s what I love about the variety of client jobs. From designing a family fun center theme park or buttons or websites, I’m always pulling skills that I learned on one job and using them on another job.”

Over the years, they worked on many nonfiction books — about space, evolution, rhetoric.

“I like the [projects] that are like, ‘We’re going to try to explain in the simplest possible terms these vague concepts,’” Zander says. “Where you have to draw things that are noncorporeal.”

“Or don’t even exist,” Kevin adds. “I wish the books we make now were around when we were learning and growing up because they would have been so helpful.”

The siren call of fiction

And then for fun, Kevin wrote an arctic adventure graphic novel, Far Arden, published in 2009.“It got nominated for awards and got a lot of critical attention,” Zander says. “Then I did a graphic novel basically in the same mold as Far Arden, called Heck. By the time that was finished, I felt like I really wanted to do fiction again. I hadn’t done fiction for years.”

Heck received critical attention too. After that, Zander says, “The fire went out of me for nonfiction.”

“There’s essentially no money in this business,” Kevin says, “so you should always follow your passion.”

Since fall 2014, Zander’s passion has been funneled into his own monthly comic book series, KAIJUMAX, about giant monsters in a maximum-security prison. “It’s for diehard fans of monster movies and prison movies. It’s so genre-based,” Zander says.

It takes him five or six weeks to create a comic. “I’m writing and penciling and inking and lettering and coloring. I’m writing the letters pages. Basically everything. I have one assistant on colors,” he says.

“I used to be a little more like let’s jump in and do page one. Now when I’m doing KAIJUMAX, I do it all visually before I write a word because that gives me the pacing of it, and I make sure there are no boring panels. They all have to communicate something visually.

“Only when I’m doing tightened up pencils do I actually do final dialogue. It helps too because it keeps me from being too wordy and lets me see what I have already explained through the visuals.”

The series has a six-issue season, similar to a TV season. “Then I get a break,” Zander says.

The first season “ends on sort of a cliffhanger, but basically that starts a new story,” Zander says. “I like each issue to have its own little episode and its own little arc and each season to have its own arc and really tell a story. I want to skip ahead in time for the second [season] so that it really starts fresh. If that’s the first issue you pick up, you’re not behind.”

With all the work involved in producing a monthly comic, he no longer takes on clients.

“All the stuff that I used to be doing I can’t do anymore,” Zander says.

Zander Cannon ’95 draws his comic book series, KAIJUMAX, entirely on the computer. “It has its quirks, like any other tool,” he says, “but I’d never be able to keep up if I did it on paper.”

An approach to nonfiction comics

“I’m the opposite,” Kevin says. “I think my career has gone more down the path of client-driven. Small projects. Big projects. And very diverse projects from mugs for Starbucks in Seattle all the way to doing large graphic novels.”

In 2014 Kevin co-wrote The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy, published in 2015 by Hill and Wang. His co-author, philosopher Michael Patton, supplied a prose document that provided the chief narrative conceit of a river and the basic points of view of the major philosophers.

“Experts are too wordy,” Zander says. “When you’re writing comics, you can’t make those word balloons longer than a Tweet. We’ll be able to do a better job at coming up with metaphors and narrative structure.”

“I took the master document and broke the whole thing down into an outline to try to tease out what the major elements were,” Kevin says. “I created a script out of it, which was actually kind of easy after doing 1,000 pages of personal graphic novel stuff. At a certain point, you get into the rhythm. I could see a joke clearly goes here. Here’s a good page break.

“Visuals all came later. It’s all white guys. How do you make them distinct? I really wanted to push the caricature aspect of each of the philosophers so when people heard Descartes, they saw this guy with this mustache and this flowing hair.”

How comics have changed

“There are essentially no rules in the comic book industry anymore,” Kevin says, “which is exciting. On one hand, it’s a very Wild West atmosphere, but it’s also a little frightening too to people like us who grew up with this track to become a comic book artist, and now we just have to wing it for the rest of our lives.”

“Twenty years ago you could be a letterer,” Zander says. “You could be an inker. You can’t be that anymore. You have to be a creative person with a lot of abilities or you have to be a graphic designer. You can’t be a drone anymore in comics because computers have taken all that away in a good way.

“It increases my appreciation for pen and paper but only for the things that pen and paper really provide,” Zander says. “If I was going to draw something with a pen, I wouldn’t make it neat. I hand-letter the book even on the screen. I like keeping a little bit of that wiggle.”

When they were kids

“I wanted to be a newspaper cartoonist, like Calvin and Hobbes or Garfield,” Kevin says. “Doing the cartoon for The Scarlet & Black was my way of feeling out that process. I had so much freedom, I realized I could never do this professionally.” He drew Johnny Cavalier all four years at Grinnell, in addition to trying other gag strips. Kevin also contributed to The Grinnell Magazine for nine years.

“From about 12 on, I wanted to be a comic book artist,” Zander says. He was the editor of his high school newspaper and did cover illustrations. “Some knucklehead would turn in seven inches instead of 11 so I’d have to fill in.”

At Grinnell, Zander majored in English and worked in theatre. “Theatre was where I felt you were doing art with a purpose,” he says. “Pip Gordon [former assistant professor of theatre] was the tech director and was essentially my adviser. She was really sharp about the use of art in narrative and set design and costume design.”

Kevin majored in art, specifically painting. “I thought the Grinnell art department was great for getting the classical art foundation. I had a great friend in Bobbie McKibbin [professor of art], who was my adviser. She paid attention to what we were interested in. Next class she’d have a stack of books of famous artists so we were constantly inspired.”

Making art and making a living

“There’s a constant struggle between doing what’s asked of you, doing what you think is important, and doing what you want to do, what you need to do as a creative person,” Zander says. “You’re writing stuff that’s meant to sell. Trying to reconcile that commercial aspect of what sells with the things that are in your mind, that preoccupy you, that you want to get out in a piece of art, and hiding them, in my case, in a silly genre story, I don’t think that anything really prepares you for that.”

“I’ll definitely have periods where I feel sort of a void,” Kevin says, “where I’m constantly doing projects that other people tell me to do. It helps me pay rent, but there’s nothing coming from inside. I’m not telling my stories. It’s always good to have a balance. You have to make time to tell your own personal stories.”

“On the flip side, I think there’s a lot of people who only want to tell what’s inside them,” Zander adds. “I feel like those people wash out pretty quick. You can’t throw yourself 100 percent into everything. They ask for a logo. Give ’em a logo. Don’t give ’em a $20 million ad campaign. Save your care for something that deserves it.”

Student research opportunities at Grinnell are abundant and diverse. In 2014–15, 40 percent of students completed a Mentored Advanced Project or MAP — a distinctive Grinnell program that provides exposure to research methods, collaboration with faculty, and deep career insights. It’s one reason why Grinnell ranks seventh among all private and public national institutions for graduating students who go on to earn Ph.D.s.

Translating new knowledge

Queenster Nartey ’16 earned “outstanding presentation” honors at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students in Seattle last November.

“There were huge research institutions represented in divisions like neuroscience, math, cell biology, microbiology,” Nartey says. “The judges that came to hear about my research were like, ‘This all took place at Grinnell?’ Yep, this happened at a small, rural liberal arts college in Iowa. They were really amazed.”

Nartey, a biological chemistry major, shared findings from her MAP that could have major implications for health care environments where harmful bacteria pose a threat.

“Hospital-acquired infections are a big concern,” Nartey says. “If a doctor touches a door handle and then examines a patient who has an incision still healing, that’s a way for bacteria to enter into the bloodstream and spread to different organs.

“Copper is an anti-microbial agent; it kills bacteria by disrupting the outer membrane and degrading the DNA,“ Nartey explains. “For this research we were hoping that with copper on surfaces like door handles, light switches, IV poles, and keyboards, we could minimize bacterial growth and hospital-acquired infections.”

Nartey collected samples for analysis at Grinnell Regional Medical Center. The hospital is partnering in the study by implementing copper alloy surfaces on high-touch areas in patient rooms and examination areas.

Comparing samples to those from her stainless steel control, Nartey documented a significant decrease in bacterial growth for the copper alloys. She is continuing her MAP this semester to test further for resistant bacteria and to sequence for genus and species.

“Being pre-med, it’s wonderful being part of this translational research where I see the direct impact of the results right away,” Nartey says.

Nartey’s MAP, mentored by Shannon Hinsa-Leasure, associate professor of biology, exemplifies faculty-directed research that leverages partnerships and funding for capstone-type opportunities. Nartey says having published papers as an undergraduate will help facilitate her access into a fellowship position after graduation and eventual application into an M.D./Ph.D. program.

“Queenster has become an invaluable member of our hospital research team,” Hinsa-Leasure says. “Her attention to detail and mastery of laboratory techniques have allowed us to expand on our initial studies and gather enough data to tell a complete story. I appreciate her strong interpersonal skills that have allowed her to work effortlessly with all types of care providers at the hospital and her vision for where to move the project next.”

Tying it all together

Josie Bircher ’16, a biochemistry and math double major, is using her math skills to help advance chemistry professor Mark Levandoski‘s studies on receptors in the brain linked to nicotine addiction.

Bircher says mathematical approaches are gaining favor in biology and biochemistry due to computing power that provides fast results on multiple simultaneous calculations. Her research could ultimately help lead to drug therapies that effectively treat nicotine addiction.

“The whole point of mathematical modeling is to generate predictive power,” Bircher explains. “If a model matches with experimental data when the receptor is in the presence of one drug, then we can predict how this receptor might act in the presence of another drug, or in the presence of a different amount of drug. We can use the model to then make predictions for other cases to get a general idea of how the receptor works.”

Bircher’s work expands on what students did in previous years, and she values the continuity that’s built into system. “I relied heavily on what people had done in the past and the final papers they wrote, so those really help in continuing the process.” Bircher says. “It’s a huge benefit of the structure of the MAP.”

Each MAP proposal is “essentially proof that you’ve put a lot of work into it and that the project is well thought out,” Bircher says. “It’s also a justification of the research question, how it’s relevant to previous work, what you plan to contribute to the field, and how it relates to your previous studies, because the MAP is supposed to be a culmination of all of your prior coursework in an advanced level.”

Bircher attributes the success of her current MAP to what she has learned in her math classes and sees the research process as intrinsically valuable regardless of what a student might choose as a career direction.

“As I’m planning on being a researcher, it’s been perfectly aligned with what I want to do in the future, but I think that your final goal doesn’t have to be research to do a MAP and to be involved in the research process,” Bircher says. “I think it really helps tie together everything you do in classes, and experiencing this type of research firsthand instead of just reading about it is largely beneficial.”

Levandoski says the value of research to an undergraduate education cannot be overstated, even beyond the fact that students involved in research often become full collaborators, conference presenters, and publication co-authors in the process.

“By its integrative nature, a research experience affords students some opportunities for growth that are rarely possible in regular coursework,” Levandoski says. “Students gain independence and confidence as they work to figure things out for themselves, drawing on their previous experiences.

“Some of my most rewarding interactions with research students have come from observing their ‘Eureka!’ moments — not about the science itself, but about the discovery of their passion for it. You can’t put that in a textbook or a syllabus.”

Collaborating in the field

Two summers ago, Rebecca Rasmussen ’16 and Edward Hsieh ’16 helped find what turned out to be the largest supercolony of ants ever recorded in North America. By “large,” we mean from Iowa to the Appalachian Mountains.

The success of that project earned them both an invitation from Jackie Brown, professor of biology, to do a MAP in summer 2015 on Big Island, Hawaii.

Both students accepted, and by mid-May they were planning preliminary field studies to help Brown and Idelle Cooper ’01, assistant professor of biology at James Madison University in Virginia, find out why some female damselflies are red and others are green.

“I was looking at a behavioral biology aspect because we wanted to see if the females were evolving this color dimorphism because of sexual selection,” Rasmussen says. For two months, she and other researchers stalked damselflies at various sites near Naalehu, the southernmost town in the United States.

“Our main hypothesis was ecological selection, so I was testing the alternative,” Rasmussen says. Her findings indicated that sexual selection was minimal. “What we saw goes along with what Professor Brown and Professor Cooper have been positing, which is promising for their research,” she says.

Hsieh tested for chemical properties related to the color morphs. “In the ant project I looked at their particular hydrocarbons, and in this one I looked at antioxidant chemicals to see what potentially helped protect damselflies against UV radiation depending on the elevation,” Hsieh says.

Hsieh’s early findings contradicted expectations that red pigment signals protection from UV stress. He found that the redder the damselfly, the lower its antioxidant capability. “We have a couple of theories as to why that might be so,” Hsieh says. “It’s still pretty open-ended and we’re continuing to work on it.”

Brown, who along with Cooper received National Science Foundation funding for the damselfly project, says, “Working with Edward and Rebecca on two different projects has highlighted for me both their talents and the value of our research-based curriculum in preparing students for meaningful participation in research.

“Each has built on their particular experience with the ant project, but in a completely new setting,” Brown says. “We’ll be working hard together during their senior year to submit these results for publication.”

Rasmussen says the collaborative research processes have made her feel “more prepared for going to graduate school in biology, if that’s the route I decide to take. Going through the planning stage, executing it, and then summarizing it is, I think, applicable to any career field.”

As an undergraduate, Rasmussen says, it is satisfying to do work that adds knowledge to a field. “It is pretty exciting to find things that could seriously contribute or that turn out to be an unusual finding that is worth reporting,” she says.

“I was originally interested in doing biological field research,” Hsieh says of his MAP experience, “and these opportunities gave me a lot of experience in what I would expect to do if I were to continue in that vein.”

Even fieldwork has its perks, and because damselfly research is highly weather dependent, the research team used rainy days to seek out diversions that included Hawaii’s mix of Asian cuisine, volcanoes, and black sand beaches.

“One morning it was raining, so we went to a beautiful beach for snorkeling,” Hsieh says. “We swam with sea turtles, and then farther out we found a giant pod of 30-plus dolphins.

“We were swimming with dolphins,” Hsieh says. “It was one of the coolest experiences of my life. And it was on my 21st birthday. It was awesome.”

Changing your career can be challenging or exhilarating or, for many people, much too scary to contemplate. We may feel stuck or unwilling to change because of finances or geography. We’re too afraid to start over and tackle what’s unfamiliar or unknown. Or our job is so much a part of our identity that it seems impossible to consider anything else.

“Those who do change are courageous,” says nationally recognized career coach Kathy Caprino. “They understand that in order to stretch and be happy, they have to be afraid. They also have to have goals they believe can be achieved.”

Smart career changers, she says, should follow a five-point plan:

1. Start with an honest and significant consideration of who you are. Caprino’s clients fill out an 11-page questionnaire to begin the process. “You have to dive deep and think about the talents you have, your biggest dreams, what form those dreams could take — who you really are. You really need to peel back the layers.” 2. Look at the patterns in your life that make you unhappy. Jumping from one career to the next won’t erase unresolved issues. If you don’t tackle those issues (I’m never paid enough, I can’t get along with my boss) they will follow you to the next job. 3. Create a vision, a burning desire to do something new. (See Step 1.) 4. Immerse yourself in this new (potential) profession. Spend as much time as possible volunteering, interning and interviewing with professionals in the field. Decide if you want it to be a hobby or a job. 5. Develop a plan with goals to reach. Involve mentors, sponsors, or others who will keep you accountable.

The five Grinnellians here made changes that significantly transformed their identities and more importantly, their quality of life. The switch from one career to another wasn’t easy and took years of study and practice, either formal or informal. But for each of them, life is richer and more satisfying for the change.

Corporate video producer to science teacher:

Phil Dworkin-Cantor ’86

In the weeks following 9/11, the streets of downtown Chicago, like those in most American cities, were eerily quiet, giving Phil Cantor time to reflect on his life.

On Sept. 6 of that week, he and his wife’s twin girls were born two months premature. After airplanes struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the editor at Cantor’s video production company fled Chicago, leaving him to handle hundreds of hours of footage on his own. Sitting in an editing suite until midnight most nights, then walking on deserted streets to visit his babies in the intensive care unit, Cantor began reconsidering his future.

The videos he made for nonprofits such as Chicago’s Field Museum, on Sue the Tyrannosaurus rex, were rewarding. The videos showing sales people how to demonstrate pointless new kitchen gadgets were not.

“Everything was so uncertain at that point,” he says. “I cared more about the future because I had these tiny babies and I wanted to do something more valuable — because who knew how long we’d be here? I wanted to make an impact.

“Doing the T. rex video reminded me how much I loved science,” says Cantor, who majored in psychology at Grinnell. “I had forgotten that.” He decided to stop making videos and instead teach science.

Since he didn’t have the financial option of taking two years off to get his master’s and teaching certification, Cantor found a program that would qualify him much faster. Northwestern University’s Golden Apple Teacher Education summer program certified math and science teachers in just eight weeks. He enrolled the following summer while simultaneously student-teaching in a Chicago science enrichment program.

The quickie certification left him woefully unprepared. In September 2002 he was thrown into teaching five classes, each with 32 sixth-graders and no curriculum. “I was up until midnight every night agonizing over getting lessons done, figuring out how to deal with behavior problems, and creating materials,” recalls Cantor, who unlike many of his peers stuck it out. (It’s estimated that nearly half of new teachers quit within their first five years of teaching.)

He’s now in his 14th year teaching science to Chicago Public Schools students.

“Part of why I was able to continue was the students — they’re pretty awesome — once I was able to not be overwhelmed by their difficulties,” he says. Today he teaches biology and advanced-placement psychology at North-Grand High School in Chicago’s heavily Hispanic West Humboldt Park.

In 2012 Cantor earned a master’s degree in education policy. He is currently a master teaching fellow in the National Science Foundation’s Project SEEEC (Science Education for Excellence and Equity in Chicago). He mentors student teachers and is enrolled in an NSF-funded doctoral program in science education which focuses specifically on teaching science in low-income Chicago neighborhood schools. “I’ll be studying what we can do to get our kids more excited about science and how to make it more relevant to their lives.”

He’s also politically active, working on issues from getting an elected (rather than appointed) school board in Chicago, to reopening schools that have been shut down, to promoting a social justice curriculum.

“I like working hard and I like fighting,” admits Cantor. “And while I miss some of the aspects of production work, the reward of working with students vastly outweighs that. Every day I get a chance to impact kids’ lives.”

Attorney and pastor:

Don Heath ’79

On a recent Sunday at Edmond Trinity Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Edmond, Okla., the Rev. Don Heath preached on the topic of downward mobility, based on Mark 10:17–31. In that passage, Jesus advises a wealthy young man seeking eternal salvation to sell his possessions and give his money to the poor. The man walks away dejected.

Heath tied the passage to the environmental theology movement, which suggests radically downshifting our lifestyles to accommodate climate change. “We need to do much more than change the kind of light bulbs we use,” says Heath.

Two days later, Heath, who majored in Russian and history at Grinnell, was behind his desk at Hirsch, Heath & White, PLLC, where he specializes in issues of real property, probate, and oil and gas. The Oklahoma native has been practicing law since he graduated from University of Oklahoma law school in 1982.

Heath describes himself as “bi-vocational.”

“Law allows me to pay the bills, and ministry allows me fulfillment,” says Heath, who was in his early 40s when he decided to attend seminary. “I started taking my daughter to church and reading the Bible and studying, and really getting involved in the church.” He grew up in a churchgoing family but left religion behind in his 20s.

From 2001–09, Heath took two classes per semester, one day a week, at nearby Phillips Theological Seminary in Tulsa. “They set things up so that people can work while going to school.” A single dad at the time, Heath met his wife Mary, an elementary school teacher, at the seminary; today she is co-pastor of their church. He preaches one Sunday and she preaches the next.

“It’s a fairly progressive congregation that welcomes LGBT folks,” Heath says of the left-leaning Disciples of Christ. Their philosophy, in fact, states that the church “welcomes all people of diverse race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status to worship and participate fully in all aspects of church life in a safe, loving, nurturing, and compassionate community.”

“We got involved in the climate march last year and the International Day of Peace and we go to the Pride Festival every year,” he says. They’ve also rallied to abolish the state’s death penalty. “There aren’t many like ours in Oklahoma; the vast majority are on the other side (politically).”

Heath divides the workweek into chunks. Sundays and Mondays (and Tuesdays, when he is preaching) are ministry days. Wednesday through Friday are law days. “It’s hard to go back and forth on the same day between ministry and law,” he says.

“I enjoy the law and it’s challenging, but a lot of attorneys, after they’ve been at it for 15 years or so, realize that the system sucks. You feel like you’re moving money from one pocket to another. I was really looking for something that gave me more satisfaction,” he says.

“My idea of retirement would be having one job. I’d like to just do ministry, but it’s not going to work out for now.” Still, bi-vocationality is a more satisfying way to live life. “I have a deeper spirituality,” Heath says. “I listen more and I’m not so quick to jump in and assert my opinion. Being a pastor has made me a better person and a better attorney.”

College basketball coach to financial business consultant:

Mike McCubbin ’88

For years, Mike McCubbin, former captain and MVP of the Grinnell men’s basketball team, dreamed of being a college basketball coach.

Soon after graduating he began what he calls his coaching quest, working as a volunteer assistant at Division 1 Siena College (New York) and working “a bunch of part-time jobs to support my coaching habit.”

The hard work paid off, and after three years he was hired by the legendary Stan Van Gundy — currently head coach of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons — as an assistant at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. After that McCubbin moved up the coaching ladder, first landing a full-time assistant’s job at Siena, then working as an assistant at University of Rochester.

In September 1998, the 32-year-old hit the jackpot and was hired as head coach at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. His eight-year stint as head coach was the longest of any Colorado College basketball coach since the 1970s. He also satisfied a life goal by making it to the 2004 NCAA Tournament (just the second time in school history), leading a group of seniors that four years earlier had won only a single game.

But being a successful coach at that level, besides the high stress and constant risk of getting fired, meant 15-hour-plus days and a lot of travel.

“When you’re single you’re willing to do what it takes, like making calls until 10 or 11 at night four nights a week. That’s sustainable,” recalls McCubbin, who lives in suburban Denver. Even driving a van full of college kids to a tournament Christmas week seemed doable. But not if he wanted to spend significant time with his wife and own kids.

“I was married for a year before I quit coaching” in 2006, says McCubbin, who now trains, recruits, and mentors young financial service professionals at Charles Schwab in Lone Tree, Colo.

“I was at a point (after getting married) where I knew I wanted to do something different. I enjoyed what I did but the lifestyle wasn’t one that I saw as conducive for family and what I wanted to do with my future, so the question was, ‘OK, what’s next?’”

The process “was to look for what I wanted to do and tie it back to what I’ve most enjoyed and been engaged in. For me it was helping other people be more successful than they could be on their own. That’s the common thread that drives me.”

A colleague had gone into finance, and when McCubbin researched the field, he found that coaches, teachers, and recruiters had an excellent chance of being hired without previous experience. He decided he would enjoy the work and could also make a living at it.

At 39, McCubbin got off the coaching carousel. “I didn’t want to wait three or four more years to make a career change,” he says, “but I don’t know if I would have been nearly as prepared to be successful in my current role if I was younger. And I still have quite a bit of career in front of me to make an impact.”

Happily married and the father of a 6-year-old son, McCubbin, whose title at Schwab is acquisition delivery market manager, often stands in front of a white board instructing young employees how to be more effective on the phone; he also recruits within his own organization. “It’s a lot like being a small college basketball coach, just in a different industry.”

When his wife asked him to coach his son’s flag football team, the answer was no. “I was so passionate about coaching but it’s an extreme lifestyle and the hours and emotions can consume you at some levels. These days I’m a fan,” he says, smiling.

Cardiologist to farmer and llama breeder:

Carlos Mendoza ’72

Retired cardiologist Carlos Mendoza never imagined he would one day own a farm. Nor did he picture himself breeding llamas, those tall creatures with adorably fuzzy faces and (literally) spitting-mad personalities. But after 30 years in a thriving Denver cardiology practice, he has happily transitioned to a radically different life.

That lifestyle change began in 1996 when Mendoza, still practicing medicine and single with no children, grew tired of suburban living. He started looking for open space — 5 acres or so — to live on. “I wanted to get up in the morning and look outside my door and let my dogs out,” he says. But zoning laws made buying small acreages difficult; he instead found a 200-acre parcel of land north of Denver, in unincorporated Weld County. He sold his house, moved a modular home onto the property, hired a tenant farmer — who continued row crop-farming, including corn, sugar beets, and pinto beans — and commuted to his office in Denver, until retiring in 2012.

The longer Mendoza lived on his 200 acres, however, the more intrigued he became with farming. In 2000, he started farming himself, replacing the crops with perennial grass pastures, which provided hay that was baled and sold for local livestock. Mendoza would wake at 4 a.m. to get in a few hours of farming before making hospital rounds. Tasks included moving irrigation systems, feeding animals, and cutting and raking hay when the pastures were ready for baling. He would then work at night on the farm for a few hours after he returned home. “It was a huge challenge, and I like challenges,” says Mendoza, whose brother Guillermo Mendoza ’68 is also a doctor and whose late father Guillermo (Bill) Mendoza taught zoology and biology at Grinnell for 34 years.

A year after he bought the farm, Mendoza brought llamas onto the land; there are now about two dozen living there. “I had seen llamas at a bed-and-breakfast in Mendocino and thought they seemed kind of cool,” Mendoza says. “They eat our weeds and we use their manure, and we sell and show them.” Once sheared, their wool is sold for yarn and felting.

The change from cardiologist to farmer/landowner coincided with his impending retirement and the changing health care landscape, explains Mendoza. In the past few decades, the practice of medicine had become less enjoyable; doctors were losing their independence as their practices were bought out by hospitals and other corporations.

“I bought the equipment — balers, tractors, irrigation equipment, buildings, storage space — while still working as a doctor, so when I retired I didn’t have to buy anything substantial,” he says. “A friend encouraged me to invest money in the farm and that was good advice; it’s appreciated much faster than anything I could do in the stock market. Plus it’s my retirement career, and it makes sense to invest in your career if it’s something you want.” At 62 he was ready to leave cardiology and be his own boss again — on the farm.

Mendoza employs a full-time and a part-time worker who do the bulk of the farming, although he labors about six hours a day, doing everything from irrigation to hay baling and anything else that’s needed. The farm produces about 600 tons of grass hay a year, along with champion show llamas.

“I’d never done anything like this before,” says Mendoza, who calls himself a self-taught farmer. “My dad was a pre-med counselor at Grinnell, and he was the strongest influence I had, advising us to avoid getting bogged down intellectually in our medical career. ” It was advice Mendoza took to heart.

Banker to college history professor:

Georgia Mickey ’66

“I should have been in academia from the start,” says Georgia Mickey. “My mother was a high school English teacher, and my grandfather was a professor of American history at the University of Chicago.” But getting a late start hasn’t hurt Mickey’s second career. After earning her doctorate at the age of 55, she completed several postdoctoral fellowships and now, at 71, is a happily tenured associate professor of East Asian history at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

A former banker who spent much of her career putting together deals for clients in New York, London, and Hong Kong, Mickey graduated from Grinnell with a degree in Spanish, eventually ending up in Washington, D.C., where she became the second female associate at Booz Allen Hamilton. While her analytical skills served Mickey well, her gender didn’t. “I hit the glass ceiling in the late 1960s and moved to New York, ending up in banking and corporate finance.”

After earning an M.B.A. from Columbia University to advance her career, Mickey found her niche, becoming one of the few women working in ship financing. “I really enjoyed that because it was intellectually stimulating,” she says. “I also enjoyed the customer contact. Shipping companies are generally family-owned, so you really got to know people at a very personal and professional level.”

But commercial banking changed drastically in the 1980s, and the increasingly cutthroat nature of the business turned her off. “It became more of a deal-driven, rather than a relationship-driven business, so in my mid-40s, I left.”

She worked at several small bookshops on Madison Avenue while figuring out what to do next. An ad for a master’s degree program (aimed at older students) at Columbia University’s School of General Studies caught her eye. Mickey, who since taking a high school course on Asia and living in Hong Kong for three years had been fascinated by the region, started coursework in East Asian studies. The classes sparked the idea of becoming an academic. At 49, she enrolled full time in Columbia’s Asian studies department to earn a master’s, so she could eventually apply for the school’s doctoral program.

“I was utterly captivated,” she says of her studies. “I had a fantastic experience.” She learned Chinese in her mid-50s and spent time in China researching her dissertation.

After earning her doctorate in 2004, she completed two postdoctoral fellowships, first at Stanford University’s Center for East Asian Studies and then at Columbia University. While many Ph.D.s complain that getting hired for a full-time post past age 35 is nearly impossible, Mickey found the right situation at Cal Poly and at 62 landed a position.

“I didn’t have dates in my resume, and I look younger than my actual age,” she admits. “I think the students would be horrified if they knew how old I am. But it doesn’t make a difference to me. I get along just fine with my students and that has something to do with Grinnell, because I like to give them the kind of experience I had at Grinnell.”

Cal Poly is one of the most diverse colleges in the nation, says Mickey, and she enjoys her mostly first-generation college students. “It’s really fun when you’re in a classroom and you watch their eyes light up. There’s something very magical when you realize the class is with you.”

Teaching, says Mickey, is perfect for her. “I get to do a lot of different things, from organizing a new class [to] finding images and videos, showing films, researching new topics, and engaging students in class discussions.

I like the personal interaction with colleagues and students. And teaching the students how to think is an enormous challenge, which I find fascinating.”

Grinnell Career-Changers’ Wisdom