Dear First Year,

I’m thrilled to invite you to apply to participate in the First Year Interfaith Dinner Club!  The dinner club gatherings will be an opportunity to meet fellow Kalamazoo College students from diverse religious and spiritual traditions and engage in meaningful fellowship, learning, and great dining. We order meals from some of the best restaurants in Kalamazoo to facilitate our discussions!

The mission of Kalamazoo College is to prepare its graduates to better understand, live successfully within, and provide enlightened leadership to a richly diverse and increasingly complex world.  We believe that no one can provide enlightened leadership before first identifying their own religious location and knowing the ways their perspectives are shaped by this background.  Similarly, our diverse and complex world requires the ability to act appropriately across religious and spiritual difference.   We hope to begin exploring these and other important aspects of interfaith engagement at the dinner club. 

The Interfaith Dinner Club will meet three times during winter quarter for two 1.5 hr meals and for one joint meeting with the Interfaith Student Leaders. Some preparation will be required for each meeting, although nothing that will take you more than twenty minutes to do. If you are interested in applying to be a participant of the dinner club, please understand that the expectation is that every participant attends all of the meetings. Interfaith work rests on a framework of trust and mutuality, both of which require your presence over time. 

Complete and sign the (very brief) attached form below before by 5 p.m. on Friday January 23, 2026 (third week). Questions about the club can be directed to the Chaplain by email, Teams or phone. We will then notify all applicants about our decisions regarding the composition of the dinner club no later than Wednesday January 28, 2026, and likely significantly sooner.

In Peace,
Chaplain Liz Candido
ecandido/ #7361