Colgate Magazine — Summer 2020 by Colgate University

SUMMER 2020

Feature

At the Ready: Alumni supporting their communities during the pandemic P.38

Discover

Solving Supply Shortages P.24

Endeavor

Turning Reality Virtual P.45

EPILOGUE

Class of 2020 members reflect on the meaning of their Colgate experiences. P.26

look Starry Night. High above Burke and Jane Pinchin halls, the Milky Way glitters. Altair, the brightest star in the constellation Aquila (the eagle in Greek and Roman mythology), prominently stands out on the far right. Toward the middle of this photograph, Deneb can be seen. It is the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus (the swan), and it’s approximately 2,600 light years from Earth (whereas Altair is only 16.7 light years from Earth). Deneb — with a radius of approximately 200 times that of the sun — is a blue supergiant, which means it has exhausted hydrogen fuel in its core and is beginning the final stages of its “life.” According to Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Jeff Bary, “It may likely end in a spectacular supernova explosion.” Both Altair and Deneb are part of a well-known asterism (an easily recognizable pattern of stars) called the Summer Triangle. The third point of the triangle is Vega, which is out of frame at the top of the photograph.

mark diorio

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 1

2â&#x20AC;&#x192; Colgate Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x192; Summer 2020

Photo / Collections Special Art Credit and University Archives

look Colgate’s early 20thcentury essential workers: men laboring at the University heating plant. Taken by Edward H. Stone — a Hamilton photographer who captured much of the University’s and town’s history for 50 years — this photograph is dated circa 1907.

Read this issue and all previous issues at colgate.edu/magazine. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 3

Contents

SUMMER 2020 Scene

President’s Message

Colgate News

Letters

Discover

It’s About Time A capstone seminar takes students on a multidimensional exploration of a universal theme.

Voices

Deliverance: A Laid-Off Sportswriter’s Roundabout Route to Reinvention

Racialized Stigma Fueled by a Crisis

An unlikely path leads Austin Murphy ’83 to a new career.

Remembering the discrimination people faced during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Professor Ynesse AbdulMalak asks that we not repeat the same mistakes.

Sick in Singapore Sophia Coulter ’20 experiences being treated for COVID-19 abroad.

Tolerating Uncertainty Psychology professor Rebecca Shiner gives insight into how to cope during these unpredictable times.

The Epidemiology of COVID-19

Lyrics on Life Professor Peter Balakian’s students write poems about the pandemic.

Biology professor Bineyam Taye shares his understanding of the novel coronavirus.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words The chapel serves as illustration inspiration for Georgia Carey ’21.

A plan to stop hoarding through resource sharing, as proposed by economics professor Isla Globus-Harris

Congressman Antonio Delgado ’99 speaks out.

In Case of Emergency Colgate’s EOC adopts a proven national model to handle crises and major University events.

Solving Supply Shortages

In a changing world, John Emison ’09 finds consistency in his artwork.

I know how painful racism is. But we can’t give up on voting.

At the Ready With a drive to help others, these alumni used their resources to support communities in need.

Cover: “I love Colgate, and I would not have worked as hard for this campus if I didn’t,” writes Christian Johns ’20, recipient of this year’s 1819 Award, SGA copresident, and a political science and African American studies double major. See p. 26.

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Illustration by Lauren Crow

illustrations: lauren crow (Epilogue), Franziska Barczyk (At the ready)

Work From Home

Epilogue Class of 2020 members reflect on their Colgate experiences.

Poems do witness the complexity of life, and that’s why we need them in the larger civic space of our society. Professor Peter Balakian (see p. 13)

Vice President for Communications Laura H. Jack Managing Editor Aleta Mayne Assistant Editor Rebecca Docter Communications Director Mark Walden Chief Creative Director Tim Horn Art Director Karen Luciani Designer Katriel Pritts

Endeavor

Life Imitates Art Professors Elizabeth Marlowe and Rob Nemes stage a 17th-century oil painting from the Picker Art Gallery collection.

Hooray for the ‘Boo-meter’ When this year’s NFL draft moved online, Caio Brighenti ’20 programmed a virtual fan response.

Entrepreneurial Spirit Shines Thought Into Action students leaned into change when the spring semester was disrupted.

Pocket Money A line of functional hoodies — including the topical Quarantine Hoodie — is the latest innovation by Taylor Llewellyn ’04.

Turning Reality Virtual For Nick Kokonas ’90 and Dulany Reeves Dent ’97, a decline in face-to-face interaction means changing their business models.

Alumni News

Salmagundi

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University Photographer Mark DiOrio Production Assistant Kathy Jipson Contributors: Gordon Brillon, web content specialist; Daniel DeVries, media relations director; Sara Furlong, advancement communications manager; Jason Kammerdiener ’10, web manager; Katherine Laube, art director; Brian Ness, video journalism coordinator; John Painter, director of athletic communications; Kristin Putman, social media strategist Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt. Colgate Magazine Volume XLIX Number 4 Colgate Magazine is a quarterly publication of Colgate University. Online: colgate.edu/magazine Email: magazine@colgate.edu Telephone: 315-228-7407 Change of Address: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398 Telephone: 315-228-7453 Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the University, the publishers, or the editors. Colgate University does not discriminate in its programs and activities because of race, color, sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, or any other protected category under applicable local, state, or federal law. For inquiries regarding the University’s non‑discrimination policies, contact Marilyn Rugg, Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; 315-228-7288.

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 5

President’s Message On the Importance of a Campus

am writing this column in early July. A few weeks ago, Colgate announced its plans for the fall semester. But as I write these words, we are watching COVID-19 infection numbers spike across parts of the country. If the first part of this year proves to be a reliable guide, the story is sure to change, perhaps dramatically, over the next few weeks, and the landscape will be different than it is at the moment of this writing. But one trend that has stayed constant throughout this period of crises (pandemic, economic distress, rising protests against racial injustice) is the sheer amount of attention paid to the nation’s colleges and universities. It is a rare day now when major national news outlets — particularly the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal — do not have a prominent story on American higher education. The only conclusion one can draw from this much attention and concern is, for a vast part of our society, what happens on a college campus is deeply important. And to contemplate a season in which our campuses are not full is met with a sense of loss, even dread. There is something to be learned about this level of sustained attention. For decades, the American higher education system — the vast array of colleges and research universities — was regarded as one of the crown jewels of American culture. As engines of social mobility, sources of research breakthroughs, and the places where the arts and humanities were studied and protected, our colleges and universities were thought to be a public good, a trust to be nurtured. They have never been perfect places, of course. They reflect the world from which they sprang, and thus they suffer from the problems and limitations of that world. Tuition increases, athletics and admissions scandals, and stories of student misbehavior all have further taken the shine off our regard for these institutions. The debates about the state and direction of higher education never abate, and I have never spent a year on a campus when there hasn’t been calls for significant reform and change. But, through it all, the campus has always remained an unquestionably important place in American life: a place desired and a place where a certain set of irreplaceable memories are to be made. And now the idea of the loss of a time on the American campus seems profound, even as the limitations of the American college system seem more apparent. And, again, there is something to be learned by this. It’s best to take notice when attention is paid from all corners. There is a truth here worth holding onto: The American campus is an important place. Despite all

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the criticism of the American college and university in recent years, the legitimate cries for reforms in the university business model as well as changes to admissions and curriculum, we all know there is something about a campus worth fighting for. The campus is a rare place set aside in a busy world for the nation to think and for people to be changed by thought. And now we have a duty. We have a duty, as safety allows, to get back to our work with profound determination. Especially now. Our very own Goldie Blumenstyk ’79, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education on June 3, noted: “Colleges ... have a duty to fully examine the fractures in our society — and to give us tools to mend them. It’s a daunting challenge, especially in the midst of a worldwide health and economic crisis. Still, if ever there were a need for colleges to stand up and show the best of what higher education can be, the time is now.” This must be part of our work as we return. There are a few things Colgate must stand for as we reopen — in whatever ways health advice allows. These are:

⚫ Being an academic culture committed to rigorous academic discourse and discovery. ⚫ Being an academic culture committed to the free exchange of ideas in the service of truth, no matter how hard that truth might be to uncover, or see. ⚫ Being a place where the net is thrown wider to gather, in Hamilton, the most talented students, staff, and faculty in the nation. ⚫ Being a place marked by a commitment to equity in opportunity and instilled with a sense of humility. ⚫ Being a place driven by a seriousness of purpose, even as we engage in the joys of campus life. The first year of Colgate’s third century will be remembered as one of our most challenging times. It also might — should we commit ourselves to our values and our work — be the beginning of a period of great growth, a time when our contributions to the nation and the world are visible and necessary. Times of great challenge are always times of great opportunity, if you know what you are committed to.

— Brian W. Casey

For University updates and news, visit colgate.edu.

Letters

Examining Prejudice “Unpacking Perceptions” (spring 2020, p. 21) by Professor Maura Tumulty was amazing. As so many of us are reeling from the latest — George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery — I think a lot of people are wondering what the fundamental roots of all this are. I’ve long thought that although one could argue overt prejudice is unfashionable now, we each have not done the internal homework we need to for truly eradicating the environment [in which] we’ll have more names to add to the list by the time this is published. This article hit the nail on the head: Our beliefs can be so dangerous when they stay unexamined, and whether we know it or not, they direct our personal philosophies and, therefore, our actions. I love what [Tumulty] says about “vivid imagination” too. It made me smile in reminding me of the spirituality of St. Ignatius, which also encourages imagination to free us from our “unfreedoms” (like, as Professor Tumulty points out, “negative [and unchecked] assumptions”). [The article was] great and fortunately/unfortunately very timely. I hope that I and all of us try to incorporate this more into our lives. Henoch Fente Derbew ’07 On Colgate’s Diversity Report I read with great interest the report on the University’s

plan for diversity, equity, and inclusion (winter 2020, p. 13) going into its third century. It brought to mind my experience as a Hispanic woman at the University. I arrived in Hamilton as the 17-year-old bride of an 18-yearold incoming black student, Raiful Tompkins ’72. Our first impression of Hamilton was jarring because the plate glass windows of the local diner featured life-sized posters of segregationist George Wallace, [then] governor of Alabama, who was [also] a candidate for president. It was the height of the Civil Rights movement and shortly after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Because we were a married couple, we lived off campus and so our social experience was quite different from students who lived and studied on the Hill. Many of the students had no close contact with minorities, and there was a feeling among us of being there to enhance their education. We developed friendships with many, but our strongest contact was with the Association of Black Collegians (ABC) upperclassmen, whom we looked to for guidance and support in this environment. In 1968 there was a handful of black students, possibly 15. Politically, it was a tumultuous year. At Colgate, [there was] the takeover of Merrill House by the ABC in protest of the academic and social deficiencies at the University for students of color. Being present at the time during the takeover, I recall discussions between Dean Griffith and the ABC, which ended the standoff and ultimately resulted in the first facility constructed specifically for “minority” students. I graduated from Colgate in 1973, and in the 47 years since, possibly thousands of students

of color have too. While it is certainly laudable to have a diversity plan, it strikes me as odd that such a plan is even necessary considering that most graduates have gone on to successful and rewarding careers in academia, the arts, and business. To reference the closing paragraph of the report, the eye of history is already turned upon Colgate University — for me it’s been 52 years since. While the University is to be commended for the quality of its education and the success of its graduates, it strikes a discordant note that these issues remain as relevant today as they were in 1968. Maria Candelaria ’73

Remembering Professor Carter As former students of Professor John Ross Carter, we were saddened to learn of his passing (See “In Tribute” on p. 54 of this issue). We met as sophomores in Professor Carter’s seminar on the Harvard theologian Wilfred Cantwell Smith. Both of us previously had taken Carter’s class on Theravada Buddhist tradition, and Carter, apparently recognizing our gluttony for academic punishment, had encouraged us to join his seminar the coming semester. Once a week, in the evening, we met for several hours in the classroom on the second floor of Hascall Hall to discuss the prior week’s reading. Despite the sometimes dense material, we remember those discussions fondly for their intimacy, intellectual rigor, and the friendship among the small group of us who were fortunate enough to share those evenings together. We can still remember Carter stopping on a particularly insightful phrase or observation, repeating it, and asking in his warm, purposeful, slightly

Carter made us want to continually show up as our best selves. Southern drawl, “Well, what do you think about that? Isn’t that saying something?” Carter also introduced us to Chapel House, of which he was then the director, and to Buddhist meditation. And he introduced Julia to a summer program in Taiwan, which set her down a path of studying Mandarin Chinese and the lived practices of Buddhists in China. Since graduating, we have pursued different paths. Julia continued down a path in international education; she is now an education consultant based in Shanghai and still keeps up a Vipassana meditation practice. Sam went on to study law and is now a consumer protection lawyer for the government. We both, however, were profoundly influenced by Carter’s teachings and still try to employ his lessons; in particular, to choose our words with care and to endeavor to understand the lives of others not through abstract concepts, but together, in search of common understanding, with them. He never cajoled or demanded. He only exuded patient warmth, support, and confidence that the wisdom and strength we need already exists, and the path forward in the world will reveal itself in due time. Carter made us want to continually show up as our best selves, as scholars, and as human beings. In short, he was a friend — one whom we will miss dearly for years to come. Julia Gooding ’08 and Sam Jacobson ’08

To share your thoughts on this issue, email magazine@colgate.edu, or connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 7

Voices Livelihood

Deliverance: A Laid-Off Sportswriter’s Roundabout Route to Reinvention ee the cheerful signs awaiting them, the bottled water and energy bars placed on doorsteps across the Republic. With delivery drivers basking in a heroic light during the coronavirus pandemic, I will confess to a twinge of nostalgia for my days piloting a van for Amazon. Yeah, you heard me — I’m copping to it right here: After 33 years of writing for Sports Illustrated, I spent five months in 2018 and 2019 slinging packages for Jeff Bezos. What surprises me most, looking back on it, was how fulfilling I found the work. While it often fatigued me (and some days straight up kicked my butt), the job did not depress me. Quite the contrary. What I felt, after a 10-hour shift in the truck, was the contentment that follows an honest day’s toil. It’s fair to say that I’d been flailing in the 17 months since the magazine let me go. The delivery gig gave me some structure, purpose, and dignity, which I’d been missing. It wasn’t my dream job, or anything close. But it was enough. It was also, it turned out, a path back to professional writing. I couldn’t see it at the time, rooting around for boxes in the cargo bay of the Dodge Ram ProMaster, but I was doing exactly what I had to be doing, to get where I needed to go. At $17 an hour (plus overtime, mind you), I was making a little more than my starting salary at SI, where I was hired in 1984. This was around the high-water mark of the Time Inc. publishing empire, when expense

8 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

account abuse was not just expected, it was encouraged. Even lowly reporters such as me could draw cash advances, write off dinners, and make liberal use of the company’s car service. As I clawed my way up the masthead, those perks began to dwindle, darn the luck. A 1990 merger with Warner flattened our stock price, but not so much as Time Warner’s catastrophic coupling, a decade later, with AOL — a misbegotten merger that has made me mistrust, ever since, anyone who uses the word “synergy.” Getting laid off was like getting punched in the face in a bar fight: It didn’t hurt as much, or as long, as I thought it would. Sure, I was blindsided and a tad humiliated. But it wasn’t long before I was excited, even exhilarated by this opportunity to reinvent myself. I liked that word and leaned heavily on it during those first few months in the wilderness. As it turned out, I was bad at reinventing myself — almost as awful at it as AOL and Time Warner were at finding synergies. I took a couple big swings after the magazine threw me out on my ear. My wife, Gina, and I arranged a home exchange and moved to Oahu, where I hoped to write and produce a TV series on high school football in Hawaii, like Friday Night Lights, only with more hair and vowels. No? Administrators not down with camera crews in school? How about this: I would become a political speechwriter! How tough could that be? I read books by Peggy Noonan and William Safire. I flew to D.C. for

a daylong clinic at West Wing Writers. They were hiring! They were hiring much younger people. People with experience in politics. “We’re going in a different direction,” they told me (after they’d charged my credit card $995). After whiffing on those experiments, I settled into the markedly less glamorous existence of a freelance writer. The pay was low, the work unsteady. On the bright side, pants were optional. One of the reasons it felt right to take the plunge with Amazon, no matter how it looked from the outside, was that I was demonstrating agency, taking the fight to the universe. By then I’d burned through the Time Inc. severance and all my stores

Kent Porter

By Austin Murphy ’83

of bonhomie, emailing and chatting up editors who, in the end, had little to offer. I’d expended too much time sweating and fretting over cover letters — to AAA, AARP, Airbnb, Ancestry.com, the political consulting firm Anne Lewis Strategies, and those were just the A’s. I needed to get out and DO something. It was unquestionably the right call. Oddly, paradoxically, the job built my confidence, buoyed my self-esteem. It gave me a wide range of new skills: whipping a 20-foot-long van around like a Mini Cooper, figuring out creative ways to park and double-park — on curbs and medians, in driveways, leaving juuuust enough space for traffic to get past.

In a pinch, I learned, I can scale a 5-foot gate, then drop lightly to the other side like a cat burglar to make three deliveries in a locked apartment complex. Working in a maelstrom that blew down trees and drove many of my colleagues in early, I got 287 of the 299 packages off the truck. Would’ve finished, but was called in after 11-plus hours on road. The Amazon experience made me more disciplined, accountable, empathetic, and resourceful — especially at finding places to void this 59-year-old bladder. (If there was a bustle in your hedgerow — I’m addressing a homeowner high up on Henry Avenue, overlooking I-80 in Pinole — don’t be alarmed: It was just me, answering

an especially urgent call. Terribly sorry. Couldn’t be helped.) That said, it still stung, every time I hooked a right off of Kenyon Avenue, in the Berkeley Hills, onto Colgate Avenue, whose street sign seemed to mock: Way to go, Murph! Look where your bachelor of arts in English literature has taken you! The correct riposte to that inner critic: OK, let’s look. A mediocre wide receiver, I couldn’t get on the field at Andy Kerr Stadium, but ended up covering 10 Super Bowls and a dozen college football national title games. My work took me to eight Olympics, eight Tours de France, four Stanley Cup finals, and the Calgary Stampede. I’ve interviewed Donald Trump, Gerald Ford, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Bono, and Brad Pitt. It was a hell of a ride, and then it was over. I’d just schlepped an XL box up 20 steps to a house in those same Berkeley Hills on a drizzly January afternoon when I noticed I had an email from Ted Appel, managing editor of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, a mid-sized paper in Sonoma County that punches well over its weight class. Two months earlier, I’d written about my Amazon experience for theAtlantic.com. After reading that essay, Ted had invited me up to Santa Rosa for an interview. On this day, he was calling to offer me a job. I’m now in my 15th month at the PD. As a general assignment reporter, I’m covering everything but sports: cops, floods, wildfires, vaping, vaccinations, the homeless crisis, and, obviously, the coronavirus. I wrote an A1 story on the local boy who went off to Cal Poly, joined an engineering club, and designed, with his fellow nerds, bionic hands for a 10-year-old burn victim. It got me thinking: Is Tom Brady more of a hero than my Cal Poly whiz kid? These days I’m chronicling a different gallery of heroes. Unlike my subjects at SI, they haven’t hit a genetic jackpot. But they’re often more interesting, between you and me, and no less deserving of the spotlight. My time away from the writing game left me with a keener appreciation for it. I don’t much care that I’m playing smaller rooms. I’m deeply grateful to be doing the work (I think) I was put on the planet to do: telling stories. Delivering led to my deliverance. I am defibrillated, reanimated. I am reinvented. Took long enough.

Other jobs Murphy has held: busboy, lifeguard, caddy, shoe salesman, steelworker, Nautilus instructor, and bartender at Donovan’s Pub (back when it was merely “the Pub”). Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 9

voices

health

Sick in Singapore One woman’s experience being diagnosed with and treated for COVID-19 abroad

was case No. 576 at the National University Hospital in Singapore. I had COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, “the rona,” or whatever else people are calling it. I’m 21. I could go to the gym more, but I’m relatively healthy. I grew up in Singapore, living there from ages 10 to 18 with my parents. After the rest of Colgate’s spring semester moved online, I flew back to be with them. I was in the country four days before going to get tested. March 24, at 7 a.m., I went to National University Hospital for the test. Nurses and security immediately put me into an isolation room that looked like a small concrete box. A technician wheeled in a large machine so I could get a chest X-ray without leaving the isolation room, to reduce the risk of spreading the virus further. That was followed by the nose swab, which felt as if they were trying to reach my brain. The swab results take a minimum of a few hours, but if my chest X-ray was clear, I was not at risk for developing an infection in my lungs or pneumonia. My X-ray came back clear, so I was allowed to go home at 9:30 a.m. At 3:30 p.m., the hospital called to say I tested positive for COVID-19. Within an hour, an ambulance was at my house, with EMTs in full gear to ensure that no part of them was exposed to the virus, to me. When we arrived at the hospital, the EMTs transported me from the ambulance to Ward 43 — one of the most traumatic experiences I’ve ever had. The full security team surrounded my wheelchair and screamed for everyone to clear out as we rushed through the hallways. I had already felt sick from the virus, but this truly made

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me feel like a disease. We eventually made it to my ward, and they wheeled me to my bed. There were a total of six beds in my room. Three of us were in our early 20s, another patient was my mom’s age, and the other was my grandma’s age. It was interesting being in the same room with other patients who had the virus. All of us came from different backgrounds, including how we contracted the virus, but we had this common denominator of testing positive in such a strict environment. March 24 continued to be a hectic day even after the arrival to my new living situation. I was on the phone with the Ministry Of Health (MOH) for hours as they combed through every step I had made since landing in Singapore. In Singapore, those infected with the virus are sent to the hospital to ensure the virus cannot be spread and so patients are able to be closely monitored by teams of doctors and nurses. Vitals are checked three times a day, and patients are tested for the virus daily. All treatment is free to both residents and citizens of Singapore. Families of those infected are also closely monitored. Each is given a quarantine order notice that instructs all members to stay in the house for 14 days — so no grocery shopping, no walking pets, not a single foot is allowed

to step out the door. The MOH videocalls a member of the family three times a day to ensure they are inside the home, and each member of the household must take their temperature three times a day. If any member feels symptoms, they must immediately go to the hospital for a test. If any resident violates this, their residency is revoked. Any citizen who violates this is jailed, fined, or both. There is strict monitoring, yet it is the only way to ensure the virus does not spread. Overall, Singapore was probably the safest place to be, and I felt fortunate to be there. It was surreal to have those taking care of me totally covered up, while those infected were just in hospital gowns without protective equipment. The majority of health care workers’ faces were covered — with masks, goggles, hair nets — which takes away a large part of human communication. Each patient had their own stethoscope, blood pressure Velcro cuff, and blood drawing band. I am incredibly grateful to have access to treatment, but I definitely felt like a sick person in this situation. Everything I touched, regardless of what it was, went into biohazard waste. Even with an unlimited amount of time on my hands, it was difficult to process everything. My mind constantly jumped from thought to thought. Graduation? People don’t have food. Senior spring canceled. Anxiety: You’re going to die from this. I miss my friends. After two weeks in the hospital and isolation hotel, I tested negative two days in a row, which allowed me to go home. I am incredibly grateful for the team of doctors I had and the level of care I received. This experience only further pushed my desire to go into medicine to help others. I’ve also learned that I must be in the moment more and actively choose to do what makes me happy, because you never know when and what might come next that will disrupt “normal.”

— Sophia Coulter ’20 is a neuroscience major from Singapore. She plans to take the MCAT and pursue a career in medicine.

voices as evidenced by my performance in the resulting video John B. Emerson (2020). Little did I realize that self-reflectivity would be so present in the following weeks. As the self-isolation extended into shelterin-place, I was fortunate to have access to my backyard studio. Similar to others with the privilege of being relatively protected from the hardest realities of this pandemic, the time spent at home and in the studio has slowed me down to a speed I previously thought of as luxurious and unattainable. The space made for introspection has led to some strange observations — most surprisingly, the realization of a core in

The spiralic nature of time is becoming more noticeable as I come back to these old interests.

Reflection

Work From Home In a changing world, John Emison ’09 finds consistency in his artwork.

am lucky that I was already working from my home studio on the east side of Los Angeles leading up to the pandemic. The studio is a pavilion-like structure set into our sloped backyard, with an open front facing out across our small neighborhood valley. It feels partly like a theater, where my studio practice is a performance for everybody yet nobody (thank you, Linn Underhill, former associate professor of art and art history), and it’s partly an observatory to track the movement of the setting Sun and rising Venus along the adjacent hill (thank you, Tony Aveni, Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of astronomy and anthropology and Native American studies emeritus). For the past few months, I had been making drawings, maquettes, sculptures, and video work supported by a grant from the Los Angeles gallery Central Park. I had

shown at the gallery in 2016 by emptying the space and painting the gallery’s interior cement architectural features. I was interested in how private space could be rendered legible to a public, how the architectural space of the gallery could be activated conceptually and literally, its function becoming ornamentation and back again. Four years later, I revisited the work and was surprised by how my memory of the space differed from the photographs and measurements I had taken, how my memory of the room was slowly being replaced by the documentation photography. Realizing the uncanny similarities between the gallery space and my current studio, I used the 2016 exhibition photographs as a template to construct a stage set and began filming myself in the studio. While I was interested in the ways in which art practices are outwardly performed, I was uncomfortable turning the camera on myself as the subject,

my work that has remained a constant. An elusive but continuous thread reaches from the present to the Central Park exhibition four years ago, my graduate school work six years ago, and my Colgate projects more than a decade ago. If I squint, I can even see some threads loop back to childhood. The spiralic nature of time is becoming more noticeable as I come back to these old interests, some feeling hammered and flat, others sharper and more specific. I’ve even caught myself unwittingly repeating elements of my Colgate senior thesis project. A decade after gutting a scrapyard Toyota sedan (thank you, DeWitt Godfrey, professor of art and art history, and John Knecht, Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of art and art history and film and media studies emeritus) and crudely stacking Pennsylvania blue stone inside the car, I suddenly felt the need to learn proper dry stone walling and masonry techniques over the past months. I find myself returning to basic activities that keep me present, whether it’s chipping away at stone or admiring the austere beauty of humble paper (thank you, Lynn Schwarzer, professor of art and art history and film and media studies). I don’t know how these elements will fit in to my next exhibition or a larger body of work, but they feel right, and that’s enough for now.

— John Emison ’09 is an artist and educator. He and his wife, Alison D’Amato, live in Los Angeles, Calif., with their daughter, Bennett Ruth Emison. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 11

voices

“We are here today because we are tired of being overlooked and over-surveilled. We are here today because we want the next generation to NOT have to have the talk with their children (no Nerf guns outside, stay together, this is how you interact with the police...). We are here today because we want to feel like we belong in Hamilton, even without our Colgate sweatshirts. We are here today because we are tired of being afraid. We are here today because we oppose a system that does not protect, respect, or value us. We are here today because that system does not treat us as fully human and because it hurts. We can’t breathe.” — Kezia Page (forefront), associate professor of English and Africana and Latin American studies, during a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in the Village Green

I know how painful racism is. But we can’t give up on voting. By Antonio Delgado ’99

’ve cried many a tear as a black man in America. Sometimes, it is the only way to process the fact that, in the eyes of so many, I’m a walking threat for no reason other than the blackness of my skin. And it’s been this way for as long as I can remember. I’ll never forget my mother telling me when I was growing up that her one job was to make sure I survive in America — to find ways to ensure that when I left the house to go play and hang out with my friends, I made it back home alive. Today, I’m a black man representing a district that is nearly 90% white and in one of the most rural parts of the country. I’m the first person of color to ever represent upstate New York in Congress. The road I traveled to get here was not easy. But my experience is proof that voting can bring about change that once might have seemed out of reach — in fact, it’s crucial to changing the laws and policies that have caused so much agony.

12 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

that only certain “men” are fit to govern. Here in America, we have committed ourselves to the noble idea that ordinary people can govern themselves — and do so freely. None of this is to suggest that voting is the be-all and end-all. Protesting and engaging in civil disobedience have a critical role to play, especially as an expression of love. Protest and voting go together: The twin pillars of our democracy are freedom to speak our minds, and one-person, one-vote. Indeed, the power of the vote is often maximized when it can tap into the energy protesters make visible. But protesting alone is not enough. If you want to hold police officers accountable through the criminal justice system, then you need to vote and elect prosecutors who will do so. If you want to change training practices and use-of-force policies to prevent unjust outcomes, then you need to vote for local officials who will make these changes and negotiate contracts that bring about real accountability. And if you want national leaders with the moral courage to lead with compassion and love rather than with cowardly fear mongering designed to fan the flames of hate and division, then you must vote for those leaders. Let your voice and your vote be heard, if you want to make change happen.

mark diorio

Opinion

With survival comes pain and grief to the point your mind is too weary to think and words don’t seem to matter anymore. I felt that during the multimillion dollar, racebaiting ad campaign launched against me during the 2018 campaign, designed to make me out to be a threat to the very community I come from. The attacks were relentless and maliciously played on ugly stereotypes and degrading notions of black masculinity. Language can hardly do justice to the depth of anguish and heartache I felt during those moments. It was hardly the first time I’d felt such despair. The dehumanization of racism relentlessly beats upon the soul. And the image of yet another person taken from us sets off fits of rage [that] I know in my heart do no one any good. Anger is natural and expected, but it must be channeled for a higher purpose, otherwise it becomes self-destructive. So you pray and you pray for an answer, and somewhere down deep, a voice rises above the cries of the soul to affirm that the only choice, the only answer, is love. What is love? In times like these, it’s justice in action; it’s agency grounded in the moral observation that we are all one — that, as the Roman African playwright Terence wrote, “nothing human is alien to me.” And let us understand that love in action is hopeful without being a pushover, powerful without being destructive, schemeful without being sinister. It’s how change happens in a democracy set against the alternative that only might makes right or

voices

Poetry

Lyrics on Life One of the oldest forms of self-expression, poetry can serve as a linguistic tool for current event commentary. In Professor Peter Balakian’s spring semester Poetry Writing Workshop, students felt compelled to write about the pandemic in the final weeks of the semester. “They wanted to use lyric and compressed language to capture some of the intensity and depth of this moment,” says Balakian, the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in humanities and English professor. “Poems do witness the complexity of life, and that’s why we need them in the larger civic space of our society.” Here, we include one poem; read others at colgate.edu/magazine.

We Never Listened to the Birds Before By Madison Heggins ’20 We never listened to the birds before, now small wings turn wicked beats. Lone sound from a white chested, black-bowed bird. The dog trying to catch it in its mouth It presses its talons into hard ridges of sloped roof. Another call. We never listened to the cars before. Rubber on wet concrete. Billie Jean through a cracked window. We miss the hostility of car horns. The old man always smoking in front of the station. The garbage man slams a plastic bin in the alley. One less man than usual. The loud engine used to signal pajamas, slippers, head scarves, a week’s trash in rushed hands. Everyone having forgotten the day that’s remained the same for years. Now everything forgotten is done. We never listened to the wind before. One powerful gust smelling of bleach and desperate bread. Carrying sounds: slap of disinfectant on somebody’s pruned hands, children next door, who have not left their home in two weeks. Wind chimes from down the street muffling breathing, a blown trash bag landing on undisturbed grass. We never listened to the rain before. Race the droplets creeping down the damp wood of the old fence, drowning the croaks of the little beetles that live there. Smell the storm, hear the old tree slapping its wet limbs against the second floor window. The sounds of a dog’s paws scrambling against wet earth into a dry home. Something new in the routine. Old too. Dip a pinky into a puddle, press it to the brick of the home, watch the water wash into the cracks, the concrete as old as the youngest daughter inside.

art

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words To express her love of Colgate, Georgia Carey ’21 created this illustration in March after the spring semester ended early. The economics major and art minor had been studying abroad in Sydney, Australia, but had to return to her hometown of San Rafael, Calif. “My best friend, Lexi Clegg ’21, and I were talking about how much we missed school,” Carey explains. During her senior year of high school, Carey had done a similar drawing of the Golden Gate Bridge, representing her home state. “It was a powerful symbol to me,” she says. “After speaking with my friend, I realized Colgate is my second home, so I wanted to commemorate it as well — especially in this hard time and with the Class of 2020’s graduation approaching.” Using paint pens, Carey created the artwork out of words such as “chapel,” “tree,” and “sky.” Written in the sky is the message “best place on earth” — “because that is most certainly what Colgate is,” she says. Carey’s first memory of the chapel: During first-year orientation, when all the new students gathered, “the person next to us had to make a fist, and we had to try and break that fist,” she recalls. “I am still friends with the person whose fist I couldn’t even break!” Carey is a member of Colgate Women in Business and the Finance Club. This summer, she is an investment banking intern at Macquarie Capital. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 13

SCENE Graduates

Colgate Confers Degrees on Class of 2020

uring a virtual ceremony, streamed live from Memorial Chapel on May 17, President Brian W. Casey conferred degrees on members of the Class of 2020. The University’s traditional commencement ceremony has been postponed until the spring of 2021. “Universities gather for teaching and for research, and they are gathered and enlivened by friendship and engagement — for challenges and the resolution of those challenges,” Casey said. “Members of university academic communities also gather for celebration and to mark the completion of one’s studies. This University has done so for over two centuries, and that is why we gather — even in these circumstances — for today’s graduates, this class, to recognize your efforts, celebrate your achievements, and confer upon you your degrees.” Casey noted that this class was his first as president, the first he met on move-in day, and the first to hear him deliver an address in the chapel. For four years, they climbed the Hill together. “Today is a day to mark your achievements, to recognize the paths you took, to honor the ways you climbed,” Casey said. “A day of complications, no

doubt — but beyond, far beyond, these complications are your achievements, your work, your walks up this Hill. These are yours always, no matter what.” Had commencement taken place along the banks of Taylor Lake as originally planned, graduates would also have heard from former United Nations ambassador Samantha Power, now a professor of leadership and public policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Instead, Power included a written message in a commencement publication that accompanied diplomas, which were sent to seniors in May. “It is easy to feel overwhelmed by the challenges of our time: widening inequality, a rapidly warming planet, debilitating political polarization, and now the most lethal pandemic in a century,” Power wrote. “If you focus on the breadth of what is needed to remedy any one of these problems, you might feel tempted to give up. But if, instead, you set your sights on a small slice of change that is within your power to make, you can leave your mark.” She encouraged seniors to value vulnerability, thank their teachers, and remember the importance of individual dignity. “Each of us has the power every day to see the people around us. We can show our curiosity. We can ask questions and follow-up questions,” Power wrote. “Most of us are immensely eager to

14 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

end our isolation — to socialize, play sports, and travel again. But when we resume our fast-paced lives, maybe we can find a way to retain the practice of seeing the person behind the worker who bags our groceries, delivers our mail, or dons scrubs before she heads out to the hospital.” The commencement package that carried Power’s words was not the only shipment received by graduating seniors in May. Members of the Parents’ Steering Committee sent baked goods from Flour & Salt, and the Alumni Council sent boxes of chocolates from Maxwells. Meanwhile, alumni sent messages of congratulations, which were posted on the University’s website. Rockefeller Archive Center Vice President James Allen Smith ’70, who

authored Becoming Colgate in honor of the University’s Bicentennial, put the COVID-19 commencement in historical perspective, noting the disruption to commencements endured by past generations during World War I, World War II, and the Vietnam War. “When world-shattering events intrude on our placid campus and its academic routines and then scatter us in all directions, we justifiably feel a sense of loss, but it should not diminish your sense of accomplishment, the pride you can take in your hard-earned liberal arts education and a bachelor’s degree from Colgate,” Smith said. “It has prepared you not just for individual professional lives but for lives of larger service, whether it’s to community, country, or the world. You are needed.” — Mark Walden

Commencement details: → 722 undergraduate students recognized → 4 graduate students recognized → 523 earned University honors → 97 summa cum laude → 237 magna cum laude → 189 cum laude

University News

Continued Leadership

he Board of Trustees unanimously voted on May 2 to extend President Brian W. Casey’s contract through 2026.

“President Casey’s leadership and vision for this historic University have had a profound impact on this campus and throughout the ranks of our alumni,” said Michael J. Herling ’79, P’08,’09,’12, chair of the board. “As we navigate new and unprecedented challenges facing our world, President Casey has shown steady leadership with a caring hand, always firmly focused on the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff. The board is honored to extend his contract, and we look forward not only to addressing current challenges but also shaping a strong future for the University with him.” Casey, who started as Colgate’s 17th president in July of 2016, has led the University through a series of initiatives and major construction projects. The path forward at Colgate is also now guided in part by the University’s Third-Century Plan. Many of the initiatives outlined in the plan are already

The Third-century plan

support

Colgate Fund Helps University Address Pandemic

mark diorio (2)

he Colgate Fund — unrestricted support for all areas of academic and student life — emerged as an important resource for the University’s response to the pandemic this past spring. In the aftermath of the campus closure, the Colgate Fund’s Student Emergency Relief Fund helped support students returning home with assistance for travel, housing, meals, and technology needs. For the approximately 250 students who remained on campus, the fund contributed

Illustrations by Toby Triumph

to no-cost meal plans for all. At the same time, the University provided a significant refund of room and board costs to families. This loss of revenue was offset by the Colgate Fund, which provides budget relief across many areas of the University. “The Colgate Fund is a key resource for the University, not only when things are running smoothly, but especially during times of uncertainty,” says John Collins, associate vice president for budget, financial planning, and analysis.

underway, including the noloan initiative; increased faculty research support; a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion plan now in development; and long-term goals to build nation-leading academic programs. He has also been instrumental in leading a series of fundraising initiatives, including the Bicentennial Challenge, which generated more than $3 million for the University’s Colgate Fund. “I am truly humbled by the opportunity to continue working with the Colgate faculty, staff, and board in shaping the path forward for this University in its third century,” Casey said. “We are faced now with incredible challenges. But we will preserve and ultimately strengthen Colgate’s core mission of teaching and research. And I fully believe the University’s reputation for academic excellence will continue to grow as our students and faculty work to answer the most pressing questions of our day.”

To ensure that Colgate’s essential operations — most importantly, the education of 3,000 students — continued, the Colgate Fund aided the transition to remote teaching and work for faculty and staff, especially by supporting technology needs. The result was the delivery of 1,500 online classes per week. The Colgate Fund also helped the University extend support to the Hamilton community. For example, Colgate provided a three-month rent freeze for University-owned properties in the village and made available extra housing for doctors and nurses who work in Hamilton but live elsewhere. “The Colgate Fund was extremely helpful this year in maintaining business and academic continuity during a challenging and disruptive time,” says Collins. “It is a resource that has an impact across the entire institution.”

— Stephanie Boland

13 bits 1 Colgate’s IT dept. provided portable wireless hotspot units for Hamilton Central School District’s students and teachers. The University also covered the costs of data fees.

2 Staff stepped up to deliver meals — sometimes more than 300 at a time — to students still on campus in the spring.

3 Look who’s back: Karl Clauss ’90 returns to Colgate as its new VP for advancement.

4 Professor Beth Parks will become the editor of the American Journal of Physics in September.

5 The Department of Recreation and the Shaw Wellness Institute coordinated the annual wellness challenge to encourage overall well-being — from fitness to financial health.

6 Need a pasta-shape reference chart? Check out Garrubbo Guide: The Importance of Eating Italian, by Edwin Garrubbo ’87.

▼ Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 15

scene

▼ 7 Caffeinated compassion: Community members donated funds to supply coffee to first responders and health care staff through FoJo Beans.

8 University chaplains provided Zoom meetings and Facebook Livestreams for Easter, Passover, and Ramadan.

Resources

Putting Minds at Ease

Bueno Tacos opened in downtown Hamilton, serving up SoCal Mexican food, including the $13 Fat Pete Burrito.

Counseling and Psychological Services and Shaw Wellness Institute comprehensively care for students’ well-being.

A 10 Students participated in the National Wildlife Federation Ecocareers Virtual Conference, cosponsored by Career Services and the Office of Sustainability, in April.

11 The Colgate Hunger Outreach Program (CHOP) raised almost $800 for the Hamilton Food Cupboard.

12 The American Statistical Association recognized mathematics professor William Cipolli with the Waller Education Award 2020, which honors individuals for innovation in the instruction of elementary statistics.

13 Members of the Music, Film, and Media course created the Together Six Feet Apart Spotify playlist for those who have been affected by COVID-19.

s it is, college can be stressful for students, let alone when there’s a pandemic. Colgate’s Counseling and Psychological Services and the Shaw Wellness Institute work hand-in-hand to care for students’ mental health needs and increase awareness of the valuable resources available to students. Approximately half of all Colgate students will visit Counseling and Psychological Services in Conant House during their time on campus. “There’s no longer as much of a stigma about seeking mental health services,” says Director Dawn LaFrance. In the 2019– 2020 academic year, the center welcomed 659 clients through its door, evenly divided between new and returning clients. One third of the center’s 3,600-plus appointments last academic year were for group therapy sessions. In any given week, the center offers up to 13 groups that address such topics as grief and loss, gender identity, and stress and anxiety management. “Research indicates that many of the concerns that students come in for, especially stress and anxiety, can be treated more effectively in group therapy,” LaFrance says. “In the group setting, they realize they’re not alone

16 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

in experiencing these things; they don’t need to be ashamed. While they do get the advice of a trained counselor, it’s equally important that they hear what their peers are doing to manage these shared concerns.” Students request individual therapy sessions for a variety of reasons. Many are one-time meetings to resolve a current issue, such as a family conflict. Other clients receive ongoing counseling for depression and other diagnoses. A psychiatrist and nurse practitioner consult with students on their medications. For students struggling with eating disorders, a multidisciplinary team offers support. For sexual violence survivors, Haven resource center is available to provide confidential care. And for all students, the counseling center’s 24/7 crisis service is available to help no matter the time of day. While most clients are selfreferred, others may be referred by students or faculty and staff members. The center’s new Mental Health Advisory Board (MHAB) is implementing the Red Folder program, a resource guide first implemented at Stanford University and designed to help faculty and staff identify, respond to, and refer students in distress. “It

There’s no longer as much of a stigma about seeking mental health services. provides guidance on how to respond to different scenarios,” explains Najla Hrustanović, a mental health counselor and leader of the multidisciplinary MHAB. “It also lists resources beyond the counseling and wellness centers that students can connect to for social support. We know that if a

student can develop a better sense of belonging, it correlates with better mental health.” That goal resonates with Katie Griffes, director of the Shaw Wellness Institute, which takes a holistic approach of connecting the mind, body, and spirit. “Our mission is to help students live their healthiest life and have the best student experience that they can at Colgate,” Griffes says. For example, the institute’s Nutrition and Body Wellness Coalition promotes self-care and self-acceptance. “It’s about being healthy and accepting of yourself and your body,” Griffes explains. The institute also offers free confidential counseling for alcohol and other substances and runs the Bystander sexual assault prevention workshops for all first-year students. Griffes is especially excited about the institute’s YOU@ Colgate, a new personalized, online wellness self-assessment that connects participants with relevant resources both on campus and beyond. “For example, if a student responds, ‘I want to learn more about fitness,’ YOU@Colgate will link them to the health and recreation website and its calendar of fitness classes,” Griffes explains. Both Shaw Wellness Institute and Counseling and Psychological Services transitioned their offerings online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Griffes and staff members created videos for the institute’s YouTube channel about how to handle feelings of isolation, the challenges of studying while at home, and how to practice self-care. LaFrance and colleagues provided individual telehealth consultations as well as scheduled and drop-in group therapy sessions via Zoom. “It has been a smooth transition,” LaFrance says. “The students have really appreciated that we’re still available for them.”

— Kristin Baird Rattini

SCENE

Every individual is guided by values, beliefs, and practices derived from his or her understanding of ultimate reality and meaning, or simply, worldview. It is everyone’s task to understand others’ ultimate reality and meaning so as to respect their values. This is the only way to acknowledge each other’s dignity, or what I call in my writings, umunthu (humanness), a Malawian concept. I want my students to understand that one does not have to agree with the other’s values to respect the other’s dignity. What is your proudest moment at Colgate?

Gospel According to Marginalized. Each course I teach, I approach it as a scholarly project.

Faculty

Get to Know: Harvey Sindima Professor of philosophy and religion at Colgate since 1989 Teaching awards: 2020 Jerome Balmuth Award for Teaching and Student Engagement 1992 Phi Psi Teacher of the Year

Q&A

mark diorio

What is your favorite course to have taught? All courses are favorite courses, because the interest and passion I have had in the materials have led me to writing books. For example, Classical Theories in African Religion came from teaching African Traditional Religion as well as The World’s Religions. Major Issues in Islam: Challenges from Within and Without developed from teaching Christianity, Islam and Political Change in Africa as well as Religion and Terrorism. Also, Christianity, Islam and Political Change inspired the writing of Religion and Political Ethics in Africa. From teaching Contemporary Religious Thought came The

What do you hope your students will leave your classes understanding? My doctoral training was in philosophical hermeneutics, that is, the theory of interpretation. Human beings are interpretive beings. From the moment we rise to the time we retire to bed, we engage in interpretation of what we hear, see, read, and think. In the light of our being in the world, I deliver and impress upon my students three things: Critical skills, authenticity, and the dignity of individuals. First, I teach critical reading and writing. I always tell my students that I prepare them for the corner office where they will read, hear, and write reports. Their task will be to critically evaluate the information or data before them by digging deeper into each report to unveil what it says and what is not said; the done and the left undone. Being authentic by speaking from one’s center is the second focus of my teaching. The beauty of the humanities is the recognition that each person has a mind and a voice. The word “voice” stands for reasoned thought and not opinion. Anyone can repeat information and have an opinion, but I want them to make and defend truth claims — the only way to be an original thinker and an authentic being. I insist that students learn to speak from their center — that is, their epistemological vantage point, or from what they know because of who they are, their background, and experience.

My life at Colgate has given me numerous moments of pride. The first was seeing my first MA degree advisee, Tracey Hucks ’87, graduate with flying colors and with admission to Harvard Divinity School. I was even prouder when she joined Colgate as the provost and dean of the faculty. What a blessing! This was and is the crowning moment of my teaching career. Another proud moment was when Michele Alexandre ’96 became a valedictorian. She was one of the many Office of Undergraduate Studies (OUS) students I taught. Seeing her walk across the stage as a valedictorian and a Watson Scholarship winner was a moment that made my heart swell with joy. My advisees and mentees have made me proud in many places around the world, but at Colgate there was one more. I always knew Antonio Delgado ’99 would become a public servant, a politician. Antonio made me proud first here at Colgate by being a winner of the coveted Rhodes Scholarship, which took him to Oxford University in England, after which he was admitted to Harvard Law School. Antonio had returned several times to Hamilton to visit me, but I never expected him to be invited to Colgate as a commencement speaker. In his speech, Congressman Antonio Delgado lavished upon me the deepest gratitude possible. I shall forever be grateful to him for celebrating me in public and filling my heart with great joy and pride. Every year has brought proud moments for me as my students express their gratitude to me in person and/or in writing. I tell my students that they make me proud because of their intellectual development. It is because of all my students who nominated me that Colgate’s highest teaching award — the Jerome Balmuth Award for Teaching and Student Engagement — has been conferred upon me. This award is indeed one of my proudest moments at Colgate. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 17

SCENE

Innovation

Making PPE with 3D

n the Case Library and Geyer Center for Information Technology, a place usually buzzing with student scholarship and discovery, a different type of innovation is happening: information technology staff are building face masks and shields with 3D printing technology. The library’s third floor has been transformed into a makerspace for the masks, which are being distributed to the campus community to protect against respiratory droplets that may spread COVID-19. Tables normally used for textbooks and term papers have been positioned the recommended 6 feet apart, and 10 3D printers beep in unison. But the printers only produce the pieces for the masks and shields — it’s up to Instructional Designer Kenny Wilson and Director of Engagement and Support Ahmad Khazaee ’05, donning lab coats and safety wear, to put together the final product. Two tables in an adjacent space,

18 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

covered with elastic, glue, and household air filters, serve as a makeshift production area. The staff has the capability to produce 12 masks and 40 shields each day. Each one is cleaned thoroughly, several times, during the production process. The 3D-printed masks begin with a threedimensional model created with computeraided design software. The model comes out as a stereolithography file, which is then translated into a set of instructions for the printer in a process called slicing. “That has its origins in the idea that these things are built up layer by layer or slice by slice,” Wilson says. Finally, the printer, loaded with plastic, prints the object at about 220 degrees Celsius. All materials for the masks are locally sourced, and Khazaee says employees across campus offered supplies to repurpose. For example, the plastic, front-facing piece of the shield is an overhead projector sheet. They were sourced from the economics and political science departments. Community Memorial Hospital donated tourniquet straps to be used in place of the usual elastic. “What’s going on here is nothing new at Colgate: a group of people recognizing a need for the institution and then putting it

into action,” Wilson says. “And that goes way back to the beginnings of the University, when people quarried rocks and built buildings. People recognize the need for Colgate in the community, and they put it into action.” There’s currently no way to formally approve the masks with the government, so the University relies on its Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) staff to confirm their usability. After a prototype was introduced to Colgate’s Emergency Operations Committee, EHS conducted a qualitative fit test for the masks and shields. By spraying the irritant stannic chloride, a coughing agent, in the face of the mask wearer, EHS was able to successfully demonstrate the use of the mask for respiratory protection. Case-Geyer was chosen as the makerspace due to its centrality on campus; it’s en route for EHS, and facility services can easily stop by and clean the area multiple times daily. “We’re in a moment in time where we all feel so distant from each other,” Wilson says. “Seeing these different teams and departments coming together to offer up help has been really awesome.” — Rebecca Docter

mark diorio

Ahmad Khazaee ’05 making masks in Case Library

SCENE Honey, I Shrank the Tools

Online learning

So Far and Yet So Close

n mid-March, Colgate (like colleges and universities across the country) suspended in-person teaching. Professors had two weeks to devise ways to transfer the magic of their classroom, studio, or laboratory to their students’ computer screens. Here are just a few examples of the innovative ways faculty members kept their students engaged and connected during the spring semester.

Dance, Dance Revolution

Amy Swanson, assistant professor of dance Course: Advanced Contemporary Dance

“This class was originally geared toward a final performance featuring student and faculty choreography; so instead, my students created screendances. They put significant energy and effort into these projects, finding new opportunities with film and isolation. The spaces they were in added to, rather than took away from, the themes they chose to work with. They experimented with fascinating ways of framing their bodies and edited their films in ways that far surpass my movie editing skills. Their films ended up looking like this was the intention all along. “I was blown away by my students’ continued engagement with the course in these unusual circumstances. They all showed up to every synchronous class session with insightful contributions to discussions based on assigned readings and viewings. I learned that it’s not necessary to have a dance studio to grow as a dancer and dance instructor.”

DeWitt Godfrey, professor of art and art history Course: Sculptures: Process and Material

“My class was going to start a project using locally sourced, rough-cut lumber. So my safety technician, Duane Martinez, and I miniaturized it: We packed up kits of balsa wood, little Japanese pull saws, knives, glue, and sandpaper, and shipped one to every student, including some in China and the UK. I downloaded a webcam app for my phone, set it up on a tripod, put all the project materials on the table, and did a demo of how to use the tools. “In a studio class like mine, there’s a lot of over-the-shoulder teaching — for example, ‘Try holding the saw this way.’ So I formalized that, using one class to hold a one-on-one interview with each student. I spent a fair amount of those meetings simply checking in with them. I wanted to acknowledge the challenge they’re facing, and that they’re sticking with it. Almost all of them

told me that, at a time when everything they’re doing is online, they really valued the tactility, the physicality of having to do something with their hands.” Investigating the Message — and the Messenger

Ani Maitra, associate professor of film and media studies Course: Global Media: Flows and Counterflows

“While preparing to move to online instruction, I realized that the media coverage of the pandemic was itself a really important topic for discussion. We looked at how the perception of risk is dependent on mass media and how it would be impossible to assess risk without the help of media technologies and representations, such as simulations, graphs, and models. We also talked about the role of misinformation — or the ‘infodemic’ — spreading faster than the virus on social media and shaping public perception of the pandemic. “I was really pleased by the connections my students made between the broader goals of this course and the pandemic conditions that they are living through. They were able to ask pointed questions about media access and infrastructure in a global frame through their own lived experiences. They also thought critically about the socioeconomic and ecological costs of ‘going online’ during the pandemic: Who gets to work from home and who doesn’t? Would there be an infrastructure — digital or otherwise — without the workers who are laboring offline? What is the global carbon footprint of all this digital activity?” Swimming in Enzymes

Ernest Nolen, Gordon and Dorothy Kline Chair in chemistry Course: Organic Chemistry

Final sculpture project by Kyle Christensen ’20

“At first I dreaded going online because I imagined pointing my computer at a chalkboard while I drew molecules. Lightboard saved the day. I’m facing my students

while I’m writing on the board. I can project enzymes and look like I’m floating inside them. I can reach out, touch different amino acids, and say, ‘See how this carbon is close to that oxygen?’ “My students watch the videos on their own time, and then, during normal class time or office hours, we have a chance to talk about the content. Basically, it’s like a flipped classroom. “Teaching through Zoom, you feel close to people but you also feel distant. I have noticed one nice thing, though. For students who might not have been on top of the material, when they’re with me on Zoom, they open up. I hear their voice and know where they are, more than I ever did before.” Seeds of Creativity

Jennifer Blake-Mahmud, postdoctoral fellow in biology Course: Advanced Topics in Organismal Biology

“Normally in this course, each student reads a peer-reviewed paper and then presents it to the class. It would be exhausting to sit in front of Zoom presentations every day, so I encouraged students to try new things instead. I can’t believe how creative they got as they engaged with the information. Using tools like Google Forms, they devised interactive spaces for their peers to learn in — like online escape rooms, where you had to apply your knowledge from having read a paper as clues to win a round of “Who Wants to Be a Plant Millionaire?” Another group used their paper to write a sex advice column for plants. “I also prerecorded fiveminute ‘housekeeping’ chats. Each week they were about something different — how to be resilient, how to get organized when your day suddenly has no structure, that sort of thing. I would ask students to respond in the discussion forums. I enjoy my students as people, and I miss them. But teaching this course online has given me the chance to be creative in a way I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten to do.” — Sarah Baldwin

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 19

SCENE

Initiative

Building a Social Movement of Gratitude

Golf

Setting Records on the Green

yan Skae ’20 capped off one of the best careers in Raider golf history and was named a Division I Ping All-Northeast Region honoree. Selected by the Golf Coaches Association of America, Skae became Colgate’s first All-Region honoree after finishing with program record-setting scoring averages of 73.85 and +2.58. He was an All-Patriot League First Team selection last year after tying for conference medalist honors (he lost the NCAA bid in a five-hole playoff) at Seven Oaks Golf Club. “In the years I’ve been a coach, we rarely come across someone as talented as Ryan,” Head Coach Keith Tyburski says. “A lot of players get nervous when they get to 1 or 2 under par. Ryan kept trying to get as far into red numbers as possible.” Skae also won the 2016 Cornell Invitational on his way to setting program records for lowest 18-hole, 36-hole, and 54-hole scoring marks, career rounds of par or better (29, 11 ahead of second place); career birdies with 233 (32 ahead of second place); and a tie for first in career eagles. His season scoring average of +1.21 over par easily would have broken the program mark of +1.70, but he finished one round shy of the minimum number of rounds to quality after Colgate’s spring season was canceled with the rest of collegiate athletics. “He holds almost every record in our program’s history,” Tyburski says, “but know that everything he’s accomplished individually doesn’t matter to him without the successes we’ve had as a team.” The men’s fall season concluded at the Bucknell Invitational, where they roared to their first team championship in nine years.

— John Painter 20 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

31 student-athletes received 2020 convocation awards. Some highlights: → Team Academic Excellence: men’s basketball; volleyball → 6 student-athletes received more than one award → Samantha Croston, lacrosse: Class of 1997 Award, the Director of Athletics Award, and the Trimmer Senior Scholar Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing and Rhetoric

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eeing a need to appreciate frontline workers fighting the spread of COVID-19, Ben Sharf ’20 — an economics major and member of the men’s hockey team — co-founded the nonprofit organization 6FTCloser. Launched on April 10, 6FTCloser shares videos from grateful citizens who want to say thank you to essential workers. “The thing we realized that was missing was personal gratitude,” Sharf explains. “In New York City, people are applauding from their balconies. We felt, if there was a way to actually thank these workers — show them we know who they are and appreciate what they’re doing — we could get powerful responses.” Anyone can access 6FTCloser for free to either nominate a family member or friend by submitting the person’s name, job, and city where they are located, or to submit a short video. The campaign is for all frontline workers, including health care professionals, meal delivery volunteers, police personnel, grocery store employees, fire fighters, custodial staff, and utility workers. Once workers are added to the database, they are matched with someone who wants to send a thank you. Through a text message, people learn info on the individual and send back a short video. An opt-in text is then sent to the worker to see the video made just for them. They then have the option to respond to the person who nominated them and to their video submission. Each of the seven-person team of 6FTCloser brought their own talents to help the platform expand quickly. “We started by building out a product and had a couple of videos made,” says Sharf. “Reading the responses from the workers was enough to realize that this is a powerful thing. It gives us the energy to keep building 6FTCloser, in addition to the schoolwork and jobs we have going on as well.” As head of strategic partnerships, Sharf coordinates with large health care organizations, fire departments, and any company that has a bulk number of employees fighting the spread of COVID-19. His goal is to get as many frontline workers registered in the system to be acknowledged as possible, and he works with marketing teams at various companies to motivate organizations to get involved. Outside of doctors and nurses, Sharf says, he is specifically communicating with agencies to get everyone contributing on the front lines involved. “We have one key indicator of success for the company, and that is the number of videos that we can create,” Sharf says. “That, and how many smiles.” — Jenna Jorgensen

SCENE

Board of Directors Award for Distinguished Teaching, 2004

Retirees

Faculty Farewell With a collective 186 years of service, the following faculty members have retired:

Robert Garland Roy D. and Margaret B. Wooster Professor of the classics Joined Colgate in 1986 Specialties: Ancient history and classics

Jeff Baldani Professor of economics Joined Colgate in 1982 Specialties: microeconomics, mathematical economics, and game theory “Working with students was the highlight [of my time at Colgate]. I tried to maintain exacting expectations and to provide support commensurate with those expectations. My reward was watching so many students, despite their occasional despair at the challenges, thrive as critical and creative thinkers. “As associate dean of faculty, it was a joy to work with a close-knit team of people who supported each other, were creative problem solvers, and constantly strove for excellence with integrity. I feel privileged to have worked with such truly wonderful people. “Finally, the core program holds a special place in my memories. As someone who was trained to work with equations and graphs and whose main teaching was in mathematical economics, the core was always a challenge. It was also faculty development writ large: colleagues supporting each other’s pedagogy and intellectual growth in the best traditions of a liberal arts education.”

“I’ve been happy here because I haven’t had to be a classicist only. One high point of being at Colgate was teaching Challenges of Modernity. Colgate didn’t say to me, ‘You’re a classicist. How can you teach Darwin? How can you teach Nietzsche?’ No, [they said], ‘We need somebody to teach this stuff. Will you do it?’ I’m very grateful for that because it’s helped me to expand my horizon. So what would I take away from Colgate? That it trusts its faculty to be able to get up on something they’re not trained in. I always say I’m only comfortable when I’m outside my comfort zone, and I’ve been privileged to teach at an institution that understands and values that.”

Deborah Knuth Klenck Professor of English Joined Colgate in 1978 Specialties: 18th-century British literature, British fiction, women’s studies, the drama and culture of London Colgate Alumni Corporation

“Most of my syllabi ended back ‘home,’ with Samuel Johnson’s essays. Johnson’s writing shows great care and elegance. The Idler collection ends with a meditation on last things, May 4, 1760: Though the Idler and his readers have contracted no close friendship, they are perhaps both unwilling to part. There are few things … of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness, this is the last. … [Even] the Idler, with all his chillness of tranquility, is not wholly unaffected by the thought that his last essay is now before him. … [I]n every life there are certain pauses and interruptions, which force consideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light; points of time where one course of action ends and another begins; and by vicissitude of fortune, or alteration of employment, by change of place, or loss of friendship, we are forced to say of something, this is the last. “But I have ‘contracted’ many ‘close friendships’ here. And ‘chillness of tranquility’ hardly describes the professor whom many students remember tearing up whenever reading aloud. Nevertheless, Johnson ‘forces’ me to be ‘serious,’ even though my ‘alteration of employment’ means neither a ‘change of place,’ nor (I hope!) a ‘loss of friendship.’ I am still here, eager to learn about your lives beyond Colgate.” Philip Mulry Professor of computer science Joined Colgate in 1984 Specialties: Discrete structures, theory of computation, programming language semantics, formal methods, object-oriented programming Research grants: 6 “I feel very fortunate to have spent most of my working life living in Hamilton and working at Colgate. The University has

provided a wonderful opportunity to enjoy a rewarding and productive career working with talented students and faculty. It has also provided a conducive environment for collaborating on my research with outstanding scientists from around the world. “Hamilton has been a wonderful place to raise a family, and wecherish our many lifelong friendships. I look forward to new challenges as well as continuing to enjoy all that Hamilton and Colgate have to offer.”

Carol (Kira) Stevens Professor of history and Russian and Eurasian studies Joined Colgate in 1984 Specialties: History of Muscovy, Russian Empire and USSR; military history of medieval and early modern Europe, law and conflict resolution in early modern Russia “It has been my privilege to participate in Colgate’s growth and change over more than three decades. There are many cherished memories on and off campus. Among them, a 2018 extended study trip to Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan stands out as recent and dramatic. It’s a larger-than-life example of several things that I’ve enjoyed at Colgate: the room to develop unusual courses; unique opportunities for study abroad, including an off-road trip to the banks of the drying Aral Sea; tours of oil-rich Azerbaijan; and sharing students’ expanding understandings of the world with other faculty. It’s been a pleasure.”

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 21

Coursework

It’s About Time A capstone seminar takes students on a multidimensional exploration of a universal theme.

Metropolitan Museum of Art's clock watch ca. 1736-95, from China, made in the Qianlong era

s time real or illusory? Subjective or objective? What does it mean for the individual, and for the planet? How do concepts of time differ across cultures? These are just some of the questions a group of seniors tackled in The Time of Our Lives, a spring core distinction seminar. Team taught by Lecturer in the Division of University Studies Ferdinand von Muench and Professor of Biology Krista Ingram, the course featured faculty members from biology, music, geology, physics, philology, and psychology as guest experts at individual sessions. The concept, von Muench says, was born out of discussions among faculty

22 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

and staff members and students about the “big issues” in liberal arts education. “Time is something we’re all wrestling with in different ways. It’s important from a professional perspective, but also from a lived-experience perspective.” In spring 2018, as part of the ongoing revision process of the core curriculum, he and Ingram, along with their colleagues Ben Child, Seth Coluzzi, Regina Conti, and Santiago Juarez, convened a project titled “Core ‘Time’: Time in Nature, Culture, and the Arts.” That collaboration in turn inspired last spring’s core seminar. Time was baked into every aspect of the course, including when and for how long class was held. The typical 50-minute format

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Clock watch

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would have been too constrained, Ingram explains. “Our class is discussion based, so we thought it was important to have the luxury of time to pursue our thoughts.” The class met on Tuesdays from 7–9:30 p.m., with a break for a snack and informal conversations about that evening’s topic. “Often we wouldn’t get home until after 10,” says von Muench. “We were always still talking as we walked out the door.” Students didn’t just study time, they experienced it — for example, by traveling from bucolic Hamilton to turbocharged New York City. There they saw performances of Swan Lake and Haydn’s Symphony 101 (known as “The Clock”) as well as an exhibition featuring clocks at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To prepare, they read about the geography of time — how the pace of time differs from town to city, from culture to culture. That trip eased the sudden switch to remote learning in March. New York City had provided a bonding experience, von Muench says, and students were able to channel their sense of connection into the Zoom environment. Sheltering in place also pushed the “highly scheduled” students to note their own relationship to time — and the fact that it is socially constructed. “They realized how much of our time is always spoken for, and how different things look when that framework falls away,” he says. For their final project, Lindsey Johnson, a peace and conflict studies and Russian and Eurasian studies double major, and Claudia Greco, an international relations and Spanish double major, took a historical approach, creating a website that compares the simultaneous experience of “crisis time” and “clock time” during World War II and the current pandemic. Meanwhile, Kendra Jeans, a biochemistry major, and Courtney Casale, a behavioral neuroscience and Russian and Eurasian studies double major, combined their dual passion for science and the arts by conducting a survey of Colgate students’ perception of time and then producing a video in which dancers performed interpretive works representing the data. The range of disciplines the course exposed them to “highlighted the interconnectedness of learning,” Jeans says. “We never considered time from one point of view, but linked them together.” This was no accident, says Ingram. “The foundation of a liberal arts education is not to specialize in one thing, because there are many ways to approach any problem. Given today’s complex problems, students’ ability to respect the values and limitations of multiple disciplines is important. We wanted to model that.” — Sarah Baldwin

Sociology

Racialized Stigma Fueled by a Crisis OVID-19 is shedding a bright light on the pervasive racial health disparities that plague American society. Current data suggest that people of color — specifically black Americans — are experiencing the highest burden of morbidity and mortality rates. States such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois have been collecting data on COVID-19’s impact on racial and ethnic groups. Researchers found that, in Chicago, for example, 70% of COVID-19–related deaths were among blacks — even though they represent only about 30% of the city’s population. Blacks have a higher prevalence of diabetes, chronic lung disease, and cardiovascular disease, which are comorbidities that exacerbate the trajectory of the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In addition to these physical health complications, the disparities stem from structural and systemic factors — often due to economic and social conditions — that

andrew daddio

people of color experience. Socioeconomic and race status have intersected in ways that exacerbate social inequities. Economically, blacks occupy the lowest echelon, and they endure continuous stress and racial discrimination that adversely impacts their general health. Also, they make up a disproportionate percentage of those working low wages, so they are not privileged to work from home and might not always be able to properly social distance. It’s important to contextualize these disparities in order to prevent stigma and discrimination — injustices that I personally witnessed during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. At the impressionable age of 13, I moved from Haiti to Brooklyn during the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. This was a confusing time for me, for many reasons. In the Haitian community, we had heard of a new disease called katach, which I later learned was also called “4H” (quatre H in French). The “4H disease” label was coined by the CDC for the novel virus that seemed prevalent among four minority groups: heroin drug users, homosexuals, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. This was a whole new version of racism for which I was unprepared. This labeling resulted in unprecedented national discrimination and stigma to anyone who belonged to these four groups. As I started high school, I watched many Haitian students experience bullying and physical assaults just for being Haitians. Years later, I started working as a nurse at an HIV/AIDS ward in a Staten Island short-term rehabilitation unit (a euphemism for hospice care). Most of my patients came

from Rikers Island Prison, because they had developed full-blown AIDS and were eligible for medical parole. Essentially, they came to our institution to die. In my first six months working the night shift, I witnessed 60 deaths. HIV/AIDS was, at that time, a terminal illness before the introduction of antiretroviral therapy. This “4H disease” label continued to haunt me there. My ethnicity/nationality and HIV were seen as almost synonymous. For example, one of my new patients asked me where I was from when he noticed my accent, and I told him I was from Haiti. One night, he became agitated and refused his prescribed sleeping medication. He screamed at me, “Go back to your country…” and mumbled something about AIDS and Haiti. I couldn’t make out exactly what he said, but I also did not want to know. I was gutted. America, historically, uses stigma as a tool of power and to otherize those deemed different, dirty, and backward. Unfortunately, these practices have lingering, insidious effects on those impacted. With COVID-19, Asian Americans — especially Chinese Americans — have been experiencing the racialized stigma that people went through during the HIV/ AIDS epidemic. One very public example was when President Donald Trump and other people in power started referring to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus.” Also, now that we know communities of color are more impacted by COVID-19 in the United States, how will that affect their lives? Will they be more policed to abide by CDC guidelines such as social distancing and wearing masks? Will they start experiencing racialized stigma? Unfortunately, increased discrimination is already happening in communities of color. In fact, there have been initial reports from New York City, where the number of those arrested for not practicing social distancing is overwhelmingly higher for blacks and Hispanics, according to the New York Times. One article noted that among 40 people arrested for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4, 35 were black and 4 were Hispanic. As someone who has seen discrimination fueled by a national health crisis, I hope we recognize and heed these historical facts and learn from the mistakes of our past. Let’s stop the stigma.

— Ynesse Abdul-Malak is an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology. Her research and teaching specialties include race, aging, gender, immigration, and medical sociology. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 23

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Economics

Solving Supply Shortages A plan to stop hoarding through resource sharing

95 masks, ventilators, and medical gowns — equipment that most of us had never given a second thought — have become a source of concern during the pandemic because of widespread shortages. It’s a problem that Isla GlobusHarris, an assistant professor

of economics who studies inefficiencies in markets, decided to tackle. Globus-Harris teamed up with Elizabeth Hastings Roer, an associate economist at the RAND Corp., to propose a method of resource sharing in which areas that are so-called “hot spots” during a pandemic

Psychology

Tolerating Uncertainty How to cope with the unpredictable nature of our current times

ere’s something to ponder: Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, when did you experience the greatest uncertainty about what life

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would receive supplies from “cool spots” in exchange for a guarantee that they would be returned when needed. The economists’ objective was to sketch out a plan that the federal government or another entity could put in place to discourage institutions from hoarding supplies. Their work was published in RAND’s journal Perspectives in April. “We have seen the federal government appropriating supplies that states or hospitals have ordered, and that can create a perverse incentive to hide supplies,” Globus-Harris says. Instead, she and her coauthor propose that the federal government create a marketplace where states that are “cool spots” share supplies that they don’t need at the moment, with the federal government serving as a guarantor and providing those supplies if a state failed to keep its pledge to return them. The plan would need to be “very transparent, and it would have to be in conjunction with an increase in the manufacturing of these resources. If people know more supplies are coming soon, that will increase their trust,” Globus-Harris says. It would also draw out hidden supplies, such as stockpiles by companies not involved in health care. (Facebook was one of several companies that donated its supply of masks, which it had on hand in case of wildfires.)

would hold for you and those close to you? My most intense encounters with uncertainty have arisen from medical challenges experienced by my two kids. Their various conditions have brought many uncertainties into our family’s life and altered my sense that I can always predict and plan my future. Yet, for most of us, our encounters with uncertainty before March 2020 pale in comparison with the uncertainties brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are facing a present that was unimaginable months ago and a future we cannot predict. We face gaps in our knowledge of the virus and its short- and long-term effects on the

Globus-Harris is an environmental economist who studies subsidies, such as rebates for energy-efficient appliances and tax credits homeowners receive for installing solar panels. She evaluates their effectiveness and recommends better designs. Globus-Harris earned her PhD from the University of California, San Diego, where she was friends with Hastings Roer. The two wrote the first draft of their paper for RAND in four days. After two rounds of expedited peer reviews, the paper was published April 16, less than three weeks after the two first discussed the idea. The researchers’ goal was to get the concept in front of policy makers, and they’ve reached out to several federal agencies about the paper. Some states have already been sharing resources by returning supplies they didn’t need — California and Washington returned ventilators to the Strategic National Stockpile in early April. “That indicates there is a lot of potential for the type of transfer we are proposing,” Globus-Harris says. She believes a more formal arrangement would reap even greater rewards. Next, the researchers plan to work on a more extensive analysis of their concept, using data on current supplies to analyze the potential benefits of their proposed policy. — Jennifer Altmann

people who have been infected. We do not yet know the best ways to mitigate its effects on our daily lives. Most importantly, we do not know when and how the pandemic will end. Even for those of us who are accustomed to managing uncertainty, the present situation is extreme. The pandemic presents all of us with an opportunity to work on our tolerance of uncertainty. People vary widely in how much they are bothered by uncertainty and how much they try to prevent it from intruding on their daily lives. Clinical psychologists have been studying individual differences in “intolerance of uncertainty” for the past couple of decades and have Illustration by Dan Page

discover found that people who cannot accept uncertainty and who effortfully try to avoid it are at greater risk of anxiety and depression than those who simply bear uncertainty and recognize that it is an inherent part of life. I conducted a study with approximately 200 Colgate students during the final weeks of the spring 2020 semester, and I found similar results: students with greater intolerance of uncertainty were coping less effectively with the pandemic. Unfortunately, efforts to attain certainty simply make feelings of worry and distress worse. So, what are we to do if we are feeling overwhelmed by distress over our uncertain pandemic condition? Real-life hardships, like job layoffs or loss of resources, require concrete action, but more free-floating uncertainty necessitates a different approach. Research on the treatment of anxiety suggests that it is possible to become more tolerant of uncertainty. In fact, one of the ways that cognitive-behavioral therapy helps anxious

Use mindfulness or meditation practices that keep the focus on one’s experiences in the present without attempting to alter those experiences.

Mark diorio

people become less so is by helping them learn to stay in the present and to observe the desire for certainty without acting on it. To do so, one has to first recognize the moments when one is grasping for certainty when it cannot be achieved and then work toward accepting the uncertainty. A particularly helpful approach in those moments is to use mindfulness or meditation practices that keep the focus on one’s experiences in the present without attempting to alter those experiences. As Voltaire noted, “Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one” — a claim that is true during the pandemic and beyond.

— Rebecca Shiner is a professor of psychological and brain sciences. Her research lies at the intersection of personality, developmental, and clinical psychology.

Science

The Epidemiology of COVID-19 Biology Professor Bineyam Taye explains

As the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in the United States, students in Assistant Professor of Biology Bineyam Taye’s epidemiology courses were privy to a practical application of their studies. They used a matrix to decide how they would advise policy makers to invest in preparedness for epidemics, such as calculating case fatality rate (the proportion of people who die from COVID-19 among individuals diagnosed with the virus over a period of time). They also helped to determine an outlook for the virus, examining its basic reproduction number — the amount of cases expected on average in a homogeneous population as a result of infection by a single case. Step inside Taye’s spring virtual classroom and learn his understanding of the novel coronavirus’s epidemiology: Until you have a full natural history of a disease, there aren’t many answers. At this point, Taye says, there are more unknowns about COVID-19 than there are absolutes. “Researchers don’t fully elucidate the mechanism of how the virus is transmitted and has persisted in the external environment. Anyone is at risk.”

We’ll know more once there’s a documented natural history — defined as the “progression of the disease without any intervention,” Taye says. In some ways, COVID-19 is similar to other diseases. We can learn from them. COVID-19 has a 79% genetic similarity to the SARS virus, Taye says. “Both of them jump from animal to human, and both have similar kinds of clinical presentations, [such as] flu-like symptoms. The biggest difference between SARS and coronavirus is, [with] coronavirus, people can transmit the disease while they are asymptomatic. But in SARS, people spread the virus when they are critically ill or symptomatic. So, it was simple to identify sick people and contain the SARS epidemic. “One of the biggest mistakes policy makers can learn from the SARS epidemic is that there was an effort to develop a vaccine, but it was stopped because we controlled SARS,” Taye says. “That vaccine could have been used now or could serve as a good starting point to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.” This isn’t the worst pandemic we’ve seen. It’s just the worst in our lifetime. “Spanish flu is the worst pandemic on record. Between 50–100 million people worldwide died. The case fatality rate is also very high for Spanish flu.” The major difference with COVID-19 is that the spread may be higher because travel is more accessible. Long term, we will develop immunity through infection or a vaccine. Students in Taye’s course studied population attributable fraction, the proportional reduction in population disease or mortality that would occur if exposure to a risk factor, like COVID-19, were reduced by an alternative ideal exposure scenario, such as social distancing and using face masks. But those are short-term solutions to a long-term problem. “A lot of people are infected because COVID-19 is a novel virus and no one is immune. But after time, when the majority of people are infected, we will develop antibodies. Then the chance of reinfection is expected to be low, [as long as] there is no mutation — meaning no new strain. However, emerging evidence is not in full favor of community-level immunity (herd immunity) resulting from previous infection.” The only game changer would be developing immunity via vaccine, Taye adds. It might be similar to the flu vaccine — a slightly different formulation administered each season because new strains pop up through mutation. To prevent a rebound of the coronavirus pandemic, the population needs a vaccine. — Rebecca Docter Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 25

Epilogue Class of 2020 members write about their Colgate experiences: influential professors, proudest accomplishments, steepest challenges, and the unforgettable moments that constituted the wonder of it all.

ear Colgate, The snow was falling in the middle of February, and it was well below freezing with the wind chill, but still I fell in love with you at first sight. I moved into Andrews Hall where you said the time would fly. I didn’t believe you, but now, what can I say? As I finish my senior year on Zoom, I thought I would have at least a few more weeks to say goodbye. You opened my eyes to philosophers’ unanswered questions from the first semester on, where you led me up the steps of Hascall Hall. After that C+ in Intro to Ethics, how could I have turned away? I wanted this kind of test; I needed to show you I would get better with practice and time. Yet, the liberal arts are well rounded and you did not let me stay confined. Around the Hill, professors left it to our discussions to discover truths between the lines. I wanted to write, and you offered a white space to spill my words. Working on the “Oldest College Weekly Newspaper in America,” I lived a dream job covering Colgate sports for more than a few terms. When I sat in James B. Colgate Hall to hear the information session all those years ago, you told me I’d travel the world. And goddamn, did I see it all. I ate a jellyfish in Xiamen — though slugging a Tsingtao helped it go down a bit. Ahh, learning by experience — that fundamental pillar of any college education; I haven’t been afraid to try a new food since. Then, first-year fun was done.

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BY Eric Fishbin Through Sophomore Residential Seminars, I became part of a special community of scholars. We traveled to Munich and Bosnia, where elements of our readings came to life. Lessons and lectures did not stay confined to the campus; we heard survivors’ stories from primary sources and walked through concentration and refugee camps. The impact and memories of that trip will last forever. Junior year did not wait for me to get my head straight. As the late summer turned to winter, the fall semester on campus swept by in a blur. Slow down! Then I was gone again, studying literature in Bloomsbury. Exploring the corners of London was like a dream. I found my cities and picked up a couple of new best friends along the way. I returned to you as soon as I could, picking up a summer gig in admission. There, I was on the other side, telling the next generation of students about the opportunities that lie ahead. As I walked down Willow Path to class each day, I looked around Taylor Lake and saw the view of the Hill — sunny skies, rain, fog, or snow. Even when work was stressful and life was hard, I couldn’t help but smile at your beauty. I am grateful to have been in Hamilton for four years. Thank you for the challenge, Colgate. I’ll see you soon, Eric Fishbin, philosophy major, English minor from Port Washington, N.Y.

Eric Fishbin in Wales during a weeklong trip with the 2019 London English Study Group

Christian Johns was this year's student keynote speaker at the opening ceremony for Colgate's commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.

ONE COMMUNITY, ONE COLGATE BY christian johns

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figure out how to overcome those divisions. How do we build a community that values personhood above all else? My time at Colgate was spent trying to answer that question. I did not want to believe in the status quo, I wanted more for the collegiate experience of myself and my peers. Work needed to be done to bridge the gaps that had become so prevalent in our reality. When the Student Government Association Roundtable was formulated, it was my intention to lay the foundation for the community building needed to change mindsets and connect students from across campus. It was truly one of my proudest moments to see people engaged in deep dialogue about creating spaces, student experiences, and how to make a profound difference on campus. Our community can come together in good faith for the benefit of every person at Colgate. Knowing that community is possible motivated me to keep trying to answer that guiding question. My peers were trying to answer the

question as well. The leaders of ALANA, Black Student Union, Konosioni, the Latin American Student Organization, women’s studies, and many more were driven to create community. I am so proud of the work we did together and of the leaders who will come after us. It is crucial for us to realize the power of uniting our resources and energy behind the common cause of making Colgate a better place for all people, especially marginalized identities. Although the challenges that we, as a collective, faced were difficult, I don’t think many of us would trade it for another college experience. I love Colgate, and I would not have worked as hard for this campus if I didn’t. — Christian Johns, recipient of this year’s 1819 Award, is a political science and African American studies double major from Chicago, Ill. He will begin his postgraduate career at UBS Financial Services, Inc. as a public finance analyst in the firm’s investment bank.

mark diorio

community is made up of people who have different backgrounds, ideas, traditions, and values. Every person brings something special to the community that was not present before. We accept the uniqueness of each person’s identity and we make them feel at home; they become a part of our body. Colgate’s community is no different; we can make everyone feel accepted and loved. I’ve seen it happen at ALANAPalooza, Dancefest, OUS/First-Gen family dinners, and so many other places. The power of a community can unite us in moments of joy or sorrow. It can be a constant in someone’s turbulent life. We must be mindful, though, that not everyone sees the same community. That same heterogeneity can separate us and pull the threads that hold us together. I’ve seen up close the divisions we, as a community, have made along cultural, political, racial, and socioeconomic lines. Our challenge as scholar-students is to

ROOM WITH A VIEW BY lucy feidelson

s a writer, I have always gravitated toward fiction and journalism — that is, writing about others. But in Professor Jennifer Brice’s Creative Nonfiction course, my peers and I learned how to write about ourselves and why we should. It is not the grandiose events, we discovered, but the mere substance of our lives that makes for interesting prose. Professor Brice helped me realize that moments at Colgate are worth documenting. It was Thursday, March 12, the day Colgate announced all students would have to leave campus and return home. Oddly enough, it was my favorite day at Colgate. In the late hours of the night, too sad and too wired to go to sleep, a few of us huddled inside my friend Mal’s small but always orderly single. Her bed rested against a window that overlooked Lebanon Street — with a view spanning from Swank to Slices. We propped open the window, wrapped ourselves in a weighted blanket, and played music out of an industrial-sized speaker for the passersby below. We watched as students danced on the sidewalks and in the streets. Strangers and friends waved up at us; they shared cigarettes (clearly, social distancing had not yet gone into effect in Hamilton); they linked arms; they gulped down pizza, oil and ranch dressing dripping down their faces. This will be here when we’re gone, I thought. At about 2 a.m., a police officer in a black beanie and gloves looked up at us from the street and asked that we turn the volume down. “It’s getting late,” he said shyly, apparently sorry to interfere with our impromptu block party. We quickly complied and asked him if he had any song requests. He picked something by a heavy metal band, maybe Metallica, I can’t remember now. “And turn the volume up,” he said with a laugh. I think he understood we were desperately trying to wring out what was left of our time together. Rock music echoed through the village as the wind carried parchment pizza liners down the street like huge snowflakes. Although my senior year was interrupted and a diploma in the mail will mark its ending, I find consolation in knowing that life on Lebanon Street will eventually resume. Maybe someone else at Colgate will write about it.

“Rock music echoed through the village as the wind carried parchment pizza liners down the street like huge snowflakes.”

— Lucy Feidelson, from Bedford, N.Y., majored in psychological science and minored in Spanish and creative writing. Illustration by Lauren Crow

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 29

A DEEP LEVEL OF SERVICE BY david little

hen I came to Colgate, I knew I wanted to be involved in a volunteer emergency services agency, but I didn’t realize how large of a role Southern Madison County Volunteer Ambulance Corps (SOMAC) would play in my Colgate experience. SOMAC became like a second home for me. Even when I was not on shift, I frequently spent time at the station on Lebanon Street, studying or spending time with friends. I made many friendships over my four years in SOMAC, both with students involved in the program as well as with staff and community partners. Through SOMAC, I traveled to areas of the Southern Madison County region where I wouldn’t have otherwise gone. I was also able to become involved with the Hamilton Area Community Coalition, which helps to prevent substance abuse. Overall, this deep level of service made me feel more like part of the Hamilton community for the past four years. Being a student in any of the firstresponse agencies through the Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education at Colgate is not a typical student lifestyle. It can require helping someone having a cardiac emergency, rushing a patient to a hospital in Utica, N.Y., and then returning to campus to take an exam that afternoon. Or it could call for extricating someone off of a snowy hill in the middle of the night and then attending an 8 a.m. class. Even so, serving the community in this way is one of the most rewarding challenges. One of the most heartwarming parts of volunteering for SOMAC and also being a Colgate student was seeing how much the University cares about its students. SOMAC works with the counseling center and the sexual violence response center, Haven, to learn how to support students in crisis; the athletics department to assist injured athletes; campus safety to plan a response to emergencies on campus; and other departments — all with a goal of supporting Colgate students. This made me feel incredibly cared for by the University,

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David Little at his internship with Northwell Health last summer.

and it was heartening to see how much work so many departments devote to keeping students safe. I remember being in an orientation session during my first week on campus and hearing that much of what I’d learn at Colgate would not take place in the classroom. Being an EMT with SOMAC, I have learned so much. I’m

so happy that during my first semester, at the activities fair, I approached the table with the ambulance parked behind it. — David Little is an economics and psychology double major from East Dennis, Mass. In July, he joined Epic Systems in Madison, Wis., as a project manager.

THROUGH PEAKS AND TROUGHS BY ruixing (Tim) Lin

n the early afternoon on March 12, an email from President Casey interrupted a discussion between a friend and me. It said the University would be closing shortly because of the COVID-19 crisis. We had been talking about our honors theses, the recent meltdown of the stock market, and the future — as all seniors do. The ordinary conversation was overwhelmed by the bitter farewell. Grapes unexpectedly dropped on the ground, unripe. The next day, I would say goodbye to the classroom. I would have the last class of my Colgate experience, Modern China. It was a good place to conclude. For the same reason I chose to audit the course, I decided to come to Colgate four years ago to explore my identity, my country, and my civilization in a foreign environment. Today, I’m grateful for what I have learned from my Colgate experience. The liberal arts atmosphere allowed me to learn from Illustration by Lauren Crow

different perspectives and think more comprehensively about questions on identity, modernity, humanity, and more. If in the early years of my life, I could only inspect myself through heavy fog, now the figure has become increasingly clear. I have never missed the taste of Xiaohuangyu (a kind of fish that is famous in my city) more than I do now. Looking back on my four years on the Hill, I will appreciate my time here, but it was also complex. I sometimes felt powerless in class discussions and thought some classmates only spoke for the sake of the participation requirement rather than a passion for learning. I guess one could regard it as a general criticism of the materialism in society, but I think there is more to an education than simply graduating to get a well-paying job. Of course, idealism does not write me a check in the real world. And fortunately, there were places I could share my ideal vision. Many professors in this ivory tower exemplify the beauty of humanity: seeking knowledge, helping students, and contributing to society. There’s not enough space to thank the many professors who influenced me. But, I would like to express my special gratitude to Professor Peter Klepeis (geography), who discussed happiness with me; Professor Thomas Michl (economics), who showed me a vision beyond neoliberalism; and Professor Maura Tumulty (philosophy), with whom I was lucky to take Challenges of Modernity. The interactions with all the professors are the biggest treasures of my Colgate experience. The good and bad at Colgate are like different seasons in a year. The long, fierce winter in Hamilton is almost unbearable, but the scenic spring, summer, and fall attract people to this remote village. The four seasons constitute a year, and the good and bad enrich the experience. Writing at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, I realize the gigantic amount of uncertainty awaiting. When will I return home? Will my graduate school open in the fall? How long will this pandemic continue? How will the economy look next year? Some of the answers will be good and others will be bad. Fortunately, my four years at Colgate have taught me how to live through peaks and troughs. Sometime before fall comes, I shall leave this village quietly, leaving no trace behind. — Ruixing (Tim) Lin is an economics major from Ningbo, China, and a Phi Beta Kappa inductee. At the time of this writing, he was one of the few students still living on campus.

A SECOND FAMILY BY hannah tubbergen

ooking back on my time at Colgate, there have been so many amazing moments that I have been fortunate to experience. I think about the incredible things I have been able to do — playing rugby, going to Martinique with the French Club, studying abroad in Wales, the time I’ve spent in Tri Delta — and it is impossible to choose just one aspect of Colgate that has impacted me the most. However, the one thing that has stood out to me among all of these experiences has been the community and people whom I have met at Colgate. Even in everyday life on campus, I have learned from some the most amazing professors, and some I’ve even

Hannah Tubbergen in Rome during the Wales Study Group in spring 2019

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 31

been fortunate enough to call my friends. This is the type of connection that seems to only exist at Colgate. These professors taught me more than just academic curriculum; they also taught me how to see the world and make it better. They’ve given me a space where I could grow into the person I’ve always wanted to be and supported me throughout some of the most challenging times in my life. When I wasn’t sure that I could finish my junior year due to my hospitalization, they were there to help me. This can be said about the entire Colgate community as well. I have found a second family, from my rugby teammates and sorority sisters who raised money to help my family with my medical bills, to all of the alumni and parents who reached out with kind thoughts and showed their support. Colgate is not just a university to me, it is the people I’ve met and the relationships I have formed. It’s the friends I know I will have for life and the strength they have brought out in me. These past four years have pushed me in many ways to be a better and stronger person than I ever thought possible. There were times I couldn’t understand how I would get through it, and yet here I am, sad that it is nearly over, but prepared and excited for what is to come. I am thankful for every experience. — Hannah Tubbergen is a computer science major from Clackamas, Ore. She was featured in a spring 2019 Colgate Magazine article titled “Patient Zero,” which chronicled her life-threatening battle against meningococcal meningitis.

“It was the most intellectually stimulating and exciting project I embarked upon in all my time at Colgate.”

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MORE THAN A MENTOR BY renee congdon

first met Professor Pérez-Carbonell (whom I know now as Marta) during the first semester of my sophomore year, when I took her Spanish literature class on contemporary short fiction. By my second semester, I was enrolled in another of her classes, and by the end of the year, I had declared a Spanish major. While this decision was motivated by my love for the subject, it’s also impossible to understate Illustration by Lauren Crow

Marta’s influence. She took me under her wing as an advisee, and we soon grew close. It was she who encouraged me to submit an essay I’d written to an undergraduate conference on Spanish literature, and it was also Marta (along with Karyn Belanger, associate director for the Center for Learning, Teaching, and Research) who arranged the funding to cover travel and lodging. Marta’s influence on me, however, has never been limited to the purely academic. During this conference, I first realized how lucky I was to have her as my adviser. Arriving late at night in Tennessee, I had to take a taxi ride alone from the Chattanooga Airport to my hotel, and I was completely unfamiliar with my surroundings. Without skipping a beat, Marta called and kept me on the line for the entire ride to ensure I felt safe. In the summer before my junior year, she proposed the possibility of coauthoring a paper together. It was the most intellectually stimulating and exciting project I embarked upon in all my time at Colgate. By the time I began applying to PhD programs in Spanish in the fall of my senior year, our paper had been accepted for publication in Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea. During winter break of my senior year, I went home to California. Marta happened to be visiting Santa Monica for a conference, so I drove down to meet her for lunch and a movie. Our once strictly academic relationship has evolved over the years into one of mentorship and friendship, and our conversation topics now run the gamut from literary theory to our favorite pictures of baby animals. Marta was also with me every step of the way throughout the graduate school application process. She helped me identify schools with strong peninsular literature programs, provided invaluable feedback on my writing samples, and wrote more letters of recommendation than anyone should ever have to write. When interview season rolled around, she even loaned me stacks of blazers and dress shirts. A few weeks ago, I officially committed to Princeton University. These days, Marta and I Skype regularly to talk about my honors thesis, which she’s advising, and our calls are often more than an hour long because we spend the first half hour chatting about life. Throughout the last three years, Marta has been a mentor, a friend, and above all, a role model. Recently, a fellow Colgate student whom I tutor in Spanish texted me after a session, “You are future Marta!” I’ve never been prouder of a compliment. — This year’s valedictorian, Renee Congdon is a Spanish major from Seal Beach, Calif. She received the Phi Beta Kappa Prize, which distinguishes her as having the highest GPA among the honor society’s inductees.

Professor Marta Pérez-Carbonell was named Professor of the Year by the Colgate chapter of Phi Eta Sigma.

TO THE CLASS OF 2020: Before the events of last spring, you were already a class that would stand out in Colgate history: You are the first graduates of Colgate’s third century. Born as the new millennium was emerging, you came to Colgate at a remarkable moment in its history. You were also, always, my class. We arrived together in the summer of 2016 and shared the highlights of a first fall semester: We memorized the campus map, learning to distinguish between Lathrop and Lawrence, East and West. We figured out how to climb from Persson to the chapel without looking too winded at the top. We ate together and talked about our hopes, challenges, and worries. I saw you sing, and dance, and compete. And while Emrys could never take the place of your own dog, he did his best to offer affection, which you gave back with enthusiasm. During our evening walks, we watched you find your footing and make this place your own. Course lectures, labs, brown bags, Patriot League Championships, Dancefests, theses, all-nighters in Case, early mornings in the gym and pool — the traditional elements of the Colgate experience are now your memories. Some moments stand out. In our happiest, we planned and celebrated Colgate’s Bicentennial. In our somber moments, we confronted threats to physical health and to the spirit of inclusivity that we treasure in our scholarly community. You met all these moments. Your achievements, both individual and collective, are numerous and inspirational. Members of the Class of 2020, you carry the light of knowledge into the world at a dark hour. Never underestimate its brilliance. Do not doubt its warmth. I ask that you take what you have learned since you climbed the Hill at convocation and use that wisdom to address the challenges you see in your community and in your world. This might seem like a tall order, issued at an inopportune time. But I know this class. I have seen you grow, and I know that you are capable of remarkable feats. I also ask that you create and build. Use your light to build wonder in this world — to build families and friendships, communities, art, and enterprises. This class will set an example for graduates throughout Colgate’s third century should you leave with the talents and potential you all have. From here, our experiences will begin to diverge — as they must for classmates who go in separate directions to pursue different ambitions. That’s why we have reunions. It is why we will plan to meet again next spring on the banks of Taylor Lake, to celebrate you, to exchange stories, and to make up for lost time. And I cannot wait to see you again. Until then, congratulations for all you have achieved. Sincerely, President Brian W. Casey

* This message was excerpted from the booklet sent to graduating seniors with their diplomas and other gifts from the University. Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 33

E IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Colgate’s emergency response system was forged in fire, but don’t let the dramatic origin story fool you. When crises arise, the University still follows a simple rule: remain calm and activate the EOC. By Mark Walden

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ANDREWS HALL RESIDENTS REPORT that their roommate never returned home after stepping out for a late-night slice. A tornado has ravaged campus. A studentathlete has been medevaced to Utica with symptoms of meningitis. An epidemic has become a pandemic, and the governor has just closed all state-run institutions of higher education. For members of Colgate’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC), these might be monthly training scenarios or the real thing. Either way, it all starts with pings on cell phones. If you work on a floor with multiple EOC members, you hear the alert tones roll from office to office, first a text and then an email. Brief lines announce an EOC activation and describe the nature of the emergency. More than 50 people assigned to this response team will begin a double-time walk across campus to the designated meeting location, where DLAN — a web-based situational awareness software program — is already projecting incident details onto a large screen. Laptops come out. There is a particular kind of silence in an initial EOC activation. A room full of people normally hums with conversation, but in these moments, everyone is trying to take in as much information as possible, as quickly as possible. They are mastering their emotions — the words and pictures must be the stuff of bad dreams or their presence wouldn’t be needed. Any conversation is typically at a librarian’s whisper, not by mandate, but because that’s how a body wants to speak when dozens of people, packed together, are so completely wrapped up in concentration. “Attention in the EOC.” The call comes from the incident commander, standing at the front of the room. Attention couldn’t be higher, but the volume and authority of the statement pull staffers out of their thoughts and into the moment for a full briefing. These four words mark the beginning of what could be a long, challenging period for staff as they guide the University community through trauma and disruption.

DEFINE THE SCOPE In autumn 1970, Southern California was burning. Between Sept. 22 and Oct. 4 of that year, while Colgate students debated women’s rights and administrators fretted over dwindling financial aid resources, fires scorched 500,000 acres — nearly 800 square miles — on the other coast. Seven hundred buildings were destroyed and 16 people died. Fire districts shared personnel

It is designed to be efficient and scalable.

and equipment in the attempt to prevent flames from leaping canyon to canyon, forest to forest. State and federal agencies poured resources into fighting the blazes, too, and when the smoke cleared that winter, the after-action reports noted no problems with the firefighters, their gear, or their tactics. But experts agreed that, if multiple districts and counties, the state, and the federal government were going to win the battle against California’s large-scale natural disasters in the future, they needed to make significant operational changes. In particular, they had to speak a common language on the same radio frequencies, share their resources, and make decisions based on the same information. Five years later, an interagency partnership introduced Firefighting Resources of Southern California Organized for Potential Emergencies (FIRESCOPE). It included an Incident Command System (ICS) that promoted collaboration and clarity of purpose on the ground and a Multi-Agency Coordination System to handle cross-jurisdictional interactions as necessary. At the heart of the ICS sat the EOC, headed by a single incident commander, typically the senior officer on the scene, overseeing four sections: planning, suppression and rescue, logistics,

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 35

Incident Management System (NIMS)/ Incident Command Structure (ICS). No longer just a firefighter’s system, it became the mandatory emergency operations approach for any federal, state, or local agency receiving funding and material support from the U.S. government. The heart of the structure, still known as the EOC, remained almost unchanged. The NIMS EOC comprises five sections: operations, logistics, planning, finance and administration, and the executive group. Section chiefs guide the work of logistics, planning, and finance, reporting to the incident commander, who oversees the operations section and sets mission

Dan Gough, associate vice president for campus safety, emergency management, and environmental health and safety

routed engines from other locations to the scene of horror. There were ambulances, police, federal law enforcement, volunteers, and self-activated retirees all converging on the same location for the same purpose. The problems foreseen by California fire officials decades earlier became reality: Throughout the response on September 11, the FDNY and NYPD rarely coordinated command and control functions and rarely exchanged information related to command and control … We believe there were very limited communications, either directly or through a liaison, between senior FDNY chief officers and the senior officers in charge of the NYPD response. In addition, some potentially important information on the structural integrity of the buildings never reached the Incident Commander or the senior FDNY chiefs in the lobbies. — New York City’s report, “FDNY Fire Operations Response on September 11” In the aftermath of 9/11, the newly formed Department of Homeland Security (DHS) sought a single system that would, again, allow everyone to speak a single language and draw on shared sources of information. Thanks to the work that had been done more than three decades earlier, they didn’t have far to look. DHS and its partner departments took the proven FIRESCOPE system, modified it slightly, and called it the National

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objectives. A liaison on the incident commander’s staff communicates between the EOC and the executive group, which typically includes elected officials and policy makers. A communications officer also serves on the command staff. Because NIMS is now a national standard, this structure can be found responding to a house fire in Peoria, an earthquake in San Bernardino, or a bombing in Boston. It is designed to be efficient and scalable; sections can be reduced or disbanded depending on the nature of the situation.

SCALE TO FIT The NIMS/ICS EOC arrived at Colgate in the backpack of Dan Gough, the new director of environmental health and safety (EHS), in 2010. A Brown University graduate, Gough learned the system during his 11 years in the Navy, putting to sea on a fast attack submarine, supply ship, and guided missile destroyer. His billets included navigator, weapons officer, combat systems officer, and force protection/anti-terrorism officer. He practiced deploying ICS in the higher education context at Rhode Island’s Roger Williams University, where he was EHS director for half a decade. The endurance required to see it through — that came

from the years in between, when he was a professional marathon runner, sponsored by Nike. Until Gough’s arrival, Colgate, like most universities, had a stack of plans for incidents ranging from toxic chemical releases to public safety threats. Gough characterizes it as “an ad hoc approach, addressing each incident as its own little universe.” But the EOC structure offered a solution that would apply to any and all emergencies in a uniform fashion. It could be practiced in periods between deployment. It could even be used to counter unforeseen contingencies, because, no matter what, the structure and the associated duties would remain the same. Gough set out to preach the EOC gospel, but implementing the system wasn’t easy. “We’ve blended it to fit the University and catered it to higher ed, because it gets weedy with resource assets and additional command staff acronyms and names, and that just wasn’t going to work,” Gough says. “That would have really pushed people further away. It took a good three years for people to understand it and appreciate its efficiency.” Then there was the expense. Even back in the mid-’70s, FIRESCOPE called for communications equipment and situational awareness software to track activities, weather forecasts, and more. The University dedicated resources to purchase DLAN, a software package that allows EOC staff and the executive group to share all of this information in real time. The EOC would need places to meet, both on and off campus. (In the case of an active shooter, it would be unwise for the University’s response team to meet and move between buildings on the Hill, so Gough and colleagues identified an alternate site in the Village of Hamilton.) Both of these locations needed to be outfitted with communications equipment, screens, radios, chargers, and other necessities. Effective EOCs also demand people power. Gough envisioned a robust EOC, following as closely as possible to the letter of the NIMS/ICS program, so he needed each division within the University to dedicate significant staffing to the effort, train them, and allow them time for monthly drills. In the event of a true emergency, these individuals would be expected to leave their normal work behind and head to the EOC gathering point. Their traditional lines of supervision, and, in some cases, the kinds of jobs they were originally hired to do, would be left at the door. EOC members serve their section and report to the section chief.

mark diorio (2)

and finance. FIRESCOPE, in spite of its title, was adaptable to non-fire emergencies, scalable for use by single districts, and resilient, given the constant upgrades to technology, forecasting software, and other tools of the trade. Developers and adherents were proud of their system and honed it for decades, but among first responders, it was always known as a firefighter’s protocol. Then came 9/11. A lot of communication took place that morning. In the lobby of New York City’s 1 World Trade Center, firefighters at their command post were on their radios, calling out locations of victims trapped in the burning high-rise. Dispatchers received offers of help and

“People will say that they operate in this ICS structure, and they will show you six or eight people, including the president, around a table in a small conference room,” Gough says. “That’s not the ICS structure.”

GET COMFORTABLE BEING UNCOMFORTABLE By the time Gough left Colgate in 2016 to become environmental health and safety director at the University of California–San Diego, the EOC was well established at Colgate. He returned to Hamilton, N.Y., as the University’s associate vice president for campus safety, emergency management, and environmental health and safety a year later, resuming his position as the go-to incident commander. Today, the EOC is activated not only for emergencies but also to manage large-scale events, from homecoming to commencement. The team meets monthly under normal circumstances. After signing in, members report to their sections. Every other meeting is a tabletop exercise devised by EHS staff members. The incident commander begins with a briefing on the basics of the scenario. Pressure builds on staff as new facts come to light. Will classes be canceled as a result of the emergency? Talk to the planning section, which has the full list of courses and associated faculty members. Will a shelter need to be set up in Sanford Field House? Talk to logistics for work orders to set up beds and generators, and make sure that the operations section is aware so they can coordinate communications and deployment of health services staff. The finance section will set up a budget code and

clear purchases. Sixty minutes disappear. Gough will subsequently use the decisions and advice compiled in the general EOC drill to fuel the same exercise with members of Colgate’s executive group, which includes the president and his cabinet. “It takes many skilled colleagues, responding in a rapid and detailed fashion, to proceed forward during a major problem, and the EOC structure allows us to gather and succeed,” says Dr. Merrill Miller, director of student health services and a mainstay of the operations section. If, after navigating Colgate through a series of emergencies both large and lesser, the EOC needed a proof of concept, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided it. Colgate’s EOC was first activated on Jan. 23 in response to the pandemic. Since the week of March 10, it has been under a sustained activation. Daily gatherings began in person and then shifted to biweekly Zoom meetings when the campus transitioned to remote work. The tables that once hosted EOC sections are now virtual breakout rooms. Working within sections, staff and faculty members have provided expert advice to guide executive-group decisions. Then, they have done the work required to implement those decisions, which included the deployment of hundreds of online courses, the depopulation of campus, the safe return of hundreds of students from programs abroad, as well as housing and feeding a small number of students who were unable to return home. With the initial crisis addressed and remote learning in effect, the group turned its focus to the future. A running spreadsheet shared between the EOC’s five sections at one point logged more than 80 of the countless decisions that needed to be made between April and

If, after navigating Colgate through a series of emergencies both large and lesser, the EOC needed a proof of concept, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided it.

The EOC comprises five sections:

• Operations • Planning • Logistics • Finance and Administration • Executive Group September — everything from the approach to be used for training 2020–21 Link staff to whether the University would offer its July 4 fireworks display. The EOC is charged with briefing and interfacing with the President’s Task Force on Remote Learning and the Task Force on Reopening the Campus to support their efforts as well. As you plan to return to inperson learning during a pandemic, you will need to know exactly how the University will sustain its commitment to community health and well-being: how many test kits can be stocked per week, how many disposable gowns are available for research labs and student health services, where temperature checks can be conducted, where custodians have conducted deep cleaning, how employees will log their health status, and how many students can safely fit into a classroom that used to accommodate 50. Conforming to the intentions of its long-retired designers, the EOC structure has ordered and focused the University’s considerable institutional knowledge and individual wisdom. Thanks to its careful design and national standardization, the EOC has provided the common language and procedures that smooth the flow of information between the University and health policy partners at the county, state, and federal levels. It has furthered Colgate’s hard-earned reputation for knowing what it’s doing. “Whether we are dealing with the challenges of a serious infectious disease or other threats, the EOC and our community colleagues have worked together,” Miller says. “We have all benefited from the EOC’s thorough and wise guidance.” Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 37

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Illustration by Franziska Barczyk

At the Ready When the world stopped being normal, these alumni used their tools to support communities in crisis. By Rebecca Docter PROMISE TO LAUGH

SPECIAL DELIVERIES

arra Puccia ’17 hurriedly opened the door of her red Jeep, got in, and buckled her seat belt. With her mother and brother, she prepared to drive the 12 minutes from her home in Queens to New York-Presbyterian, her local hospital and the place she was born. Only this time, with the usually crowded streets barren, it’d be a quick 5-minute trip. The mission? Bagels. Puccia is one of many Colgate alumni helping her community in the midst of a global pandemic. At press time, the Whitestone neighborhood of Queens, where her father is a primary care physician, was shuttered like many in the city. Queens was the epicenter of the crisis in New York City, with more than 20,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, which meant more strain on local hospitals and small businesses. “People that I’ve known my whole life, and places that I’ve known my whole life, are suffering,” she says. Wanting to help the doctors and nurses she volunteered for during high school and the local restaurants that feed her neighborhood, Puccia made a plan to give back to her community through the one item everyone needs to keep going: food. While completing her Brooklyn Law School studies online, she started a GoFundMe campaign to provide bagels and coffee to health care providers at New YorkPresbyterian, a fundraiser that’s close to its $6,000 goal. Her effort gained local media attention and drew more backers, leading Puccia to start delivering food to other hospitals in Queens, the outer boroughs, and Fort Totten, a historic military base-turned-FDNY ambulance headquarters. The money raised to purchase meals for health care providers also supports the local restaurants in which Puccia grew up eating. Additionally, it helps the businesses get more patrons by word of mouth. One pleasant sandwich experience in an ICU prompted workers to call Puccia and ask, “Where can we get more of those sandwiches?” Luckily, Puccia was ready to help.

Throughout the event, viewers were encouraged to text a code and donate to Comedy Gives Back. →

•

Comedians who have worked solely in the field for one year, make between $12,000 and $70,000 a year on comedy alone, and have lost at least $500 worth of gigs were eligible for the same amount via Venmo or PayPal. “We wanted to make it easy and we wanted to make it fast,” Zoe Friedman ’89 says.

•

LaughAid raised more than $368,000.

•

More than 4,000 people donated.

•

More than 400 comedians received grants.

ing-dong. “Hey Adam!” A mosaic of Zoom windows lined a computer screen, creating a virtual green room for some of the world’s most beloved comedians. The “Adam” is Adam Sandler. He, along with Jim Gaffigan, Howie Mandel, and other greats, joined together in the hours prior to LaughAid, a fundraiser for those who have lost gigs due to the pandemic. Zoe Friedman ’89 produced the online event with her organization Comedy Gives Back, a nonprofit that provides mental health, medical, and crisis support for stand-up comedians. The show began on April 4 at 4 p.m. ET, and for eight hours, stand-up comedians, podcast hosts, actors, and talk show hosts performed for viewers, all from the comfort of their own homes. LaughAid provided a window into the lives of comedians, making them relatable in a crisis everyone is experiencing. “It wasn’t scripted, it wasn’t highly produced,” Friedman says. “It was more like a telethon, and it was really interesting to see everybody’s entry point into the program.” LaughAid wasn’t a typical feat for anyone involved, and it took some finesse to pull off. Besides some help from a couple of talent producers, Friedman booked the acts herself. And, the day before airing, they had to switch to Zoom because of technical issues. “To produce something like that in quarantine was bonkers,” Friedman says. But the comedy world is foremost a community, and she says the performers are quick to take care of their own. Coupled with everyone being homebound and some unable to work on their usual projects, the lineup filled out fast. Back in the virtual green room, comics got a taste of the socialization they usually receive by performing in front of an audience. “I didn’t anticipate the connectivity the comics needed,” Friedman says. “It was amazing; they were so excited to see each other.” Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 39

THE GLOVES ARE ON

ith COVID-19 came a stressed personal protective equipment supply chain, including the gloves medical providers wear for patient examinations. Hannah Akre ’16 was in a position to help ease this burden at several hospitals in NYC, a city hard hit by the virus. Health Goes Global, an organization she cofounded in high school, was built on sending unused examination gloves to resource-limited countries around the world. At the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, Akre felt called to support her home country. She reached out to the New York State COVID-19 response team, to whom Health Goes Global sent a stockpile of gloves for distributing to local hospitals. “[Gloves are] one of the staples of preventative health care,” Akre says. “The number one method of transmission of disease is hand-to-hand contact. It upholds our mission to protect the community, as well as the health care worker, by allowing clinics to protect themselves with gloves.” The day after speaking with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s team, Akre packed 4,500 gloves into three shipments for New York.

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A first-year student at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, she says the virus outbreak hasn’t deterred her from entering the medical field — it’s furthered her will to help underserved populations. “I’ve been really inspired to join the medical field and to help my colleagues who are embodying what I think it means to be there for your community, [which includes] making sacrifices and putting yourself on the front line.”

THE MASKED HERO

olumbia University student Marisol Rios De La Luz, effortlessly patriotic in her spandex suit of red, white, and blue, flies to rescue her native Puerto Rico from imminent danger. For her current mission, she dons a stark white face mask and thick rubber gloves, ready to take on COVID-19’s invasion of her beloved island. She is, of course, the comic book superhero La Borinqueña, created by Edgardo Miranda-Rodriguez ’93. He added the protective gear to her original design to promote Masks For America, a project aimed at gathering funds for public hospitals in Puerto Rico and the United States.

La Borinqueña wasn’t the only superhero involved in Masks For America: The cast of the Avengers series, including Paul Bettany, Don Cheadle, and Chris Evans, helped launch the campaign. Mark Ruffalo was one of the first donors. Masks For America used the funds raised to partner with a manufacturer and produce KN95 masks, Asia’s more economical equivalent of the N95. The masks were then sent to the places hardest hit by the virus, like New Orleans and New York City. The organization distributed nearly 100,000 masks after one month of operation. Though Puerto Rico hasn’t had as many cases as other areas of the United States, the territory is still recovering from other hardships, putting it in a difficult position to deal with another disaster. To help his beloved Puerto Rico through the pandemic, Miranda-Rodriguez formed a coalition of 30 doctors working at municipal hospitals who needed supplies, to make sure the KN95s that Masks For America sent to the island landed in the right hands. “[Puerto Rico has gone through] one tragedy after another, from Hurricane Maria to the series of earthquakes that started off this year, and now the COVID-19 pandemic that we’re all suffering globally... It is incredibly inspiring that these doctors have come together in Puerto Rico to join our coalition with Masks For America.” Illustration by Franziska Barczyk

BRINGING BACK SALAD DAYS

ick Kenner ’03, founder and CEO of the global restaurant chain Just Salad, is using his business — and a new venture — to feed others across the United States. Here’s how he’s doing it: Feeding the families of New York City’s schoolchildren “The first thing we did was partner with PS 188 in New York City, which is a school that has a lot of underprivileged families. We wanted to provide meals to those families because the public school was not able to provide the same amount of meals to them as prior.” Donating 10,000 meals per week to health care workers in the Mount Sinai hospital system “We went to Mount Sinai and said, ‘We want to do something.’ And they basically said, ‘Great. We need a lot of help.’” Helping people in the NYC area get groceries “We launched a program called Just Grocery. We were finding it extraordinarily difficult to get delivered groceries, and no one wants to set foot in a store right now. We realized that we had the ability to launch a transactional website that can get our customers anything from freshly prepped, cleaned, washed produce to water, paper towels, toilet paper, and meal kits.”

AGENTS OF SHIELD

handful of Colgate alumni came together for the common good: face shields. Walter Steinmann ’79 and Lou Tufford ’80 have partnered together to design, manufacture, and distribute two face shield models: one with a band, and one that fits over the brim of a baseball cap. With Don Wilson ’79, they’re taking the concept into the future. Steinmann, the mastermind behind the project, started working with plastic as part of his Jan Plan project at Colgate in 1978. He turned it into a 30-year career as a plastics company CEO; he’s now a consultant at Thermo Plastic Tech, a plastic thermoforming facility in Union, N.J., that

manufactures items like blister packs and cosmetic packaging. “He was always a Thomas Edison kind of character in our class,” Wilson says. Now, Steinmann is using the Thermo Plastic Tech facility to make the pieces of 25,000 shields per day, many of which go to first responders, health care providers, and essential workers. “We’ve manufactured the cutting die with the help of a friend who’s a doctor to make sure we were getting exactly what they needed,” he says. The entirely plastic baseball cap shield, patent pending, is derived from a design Steinmann used years ago in another plastics factory he ran. The other model, a banded face shield, is made from plastic, plus foam Steinmann sourced at the beginning of the pandemic. Tufford runs the business outside of the factory; that includes organizing the distribution for small orders from places like doctor’s offices and small businesses that come in through the website she created, thecovid19faceshield.com. She also provides business and marketing guidance, and she coordinated the donation of 113 shields to Colgate. Wilson focuses on broader business strategy, pushing Steinmann and Tufford to think about the face shields beyond the next few months. “I’m trying to give them some strategy ideas and figure out how we can get this to expand,” he says. “It’s not a little effort, potentially. It actually could be The Little Engine That Could.” Wilson sees the pandemic lasting more than just a few months, and he wants the public to be prepared for when that happens. “We see it as a shields-overmasks proposition, where the mask certainly has a role. In some cases, you would never dream of taking the mask off in a medical situation or a virus overload situation, but you also want to have the shield to protect your eyes.” In addition to the three key players, a small network of Colgate alumni was instrumental in getting the face shields to the places that needed them most, through orders, referrals, and donations. “The Colgate connection creates an instant bond and an unspoken trust,” Tufford says. “We know the quality is there; we know why we are jumping into this; we know we are in it, not for opportunistic financial gain, but to do the most good for the most people, as quickly as possible.”

Alumni of many professions have been helping their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here’s what a few more are doing:

→ Jennifer Dowd ’87 and Audrey Morrissey ’89 produced “One World: Together at Home,” a two-hour TV event and fundraiser featuring musical acts, late-night hosts, and other celebrities. → Christina Lyndrup ’90 serves NYC Office of Emergency Management as the deputy commissioner of external affairs.

→ Laurie McKnight ’82 is a chaplain at Yale New Haven Hospital.

→ Elizabeth Krol ’92, a national client manager for Partner Engineering and Science, Inc., is helping businesses evaluate their workspaces prior to re-occupancy. “Our industrial hygiene team is conducting inspections as well as overseeing cleaning and sanitation to ensure that employees and customers feel safe when their facilities reopen.”

→ PJ Piper ’92, CEO of Far

UV Technologies, is working on disinfectant devices to help contain infectious diseases.

→ Andrea Siddons Cedfeldt ’93

is on a COVID-19 physician/resident wellness task force for Oregon Health and Sciences University, in addition to being on the front lines, caring for veterans at the Portland VA Medical Center.

→ Melissa Duncanson ’13, an OB/

GYN resident in a Washington, D.C., free clinic serving uninsured pregnant women, spearheaded the program “Moms Produce” with her stimulus check. Many of her patients struggle with food insecurity; to help them during COVID-19, she’s been raising donations to bring fresh produce deliveries to the clinic.

Have you or one of your classmates come to the aid of others during the coronavirus crisis? Let us know on Twitter @colgateuniv.

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 41

Endeavor

N F L

thesis

Hooray for the ‘Boo-meter’ Caio Brighenti ’20 programmed a virtual fan response to the NFL Draft.

faculty

Life Imitates Art Two professors recreate David Ryckaert III's Interior of an Inn.

round the world, people have been recreating famous artworks using household items — often incorporating toilet paper as a symbolic joke. Professor Elizabeth Marlowe (art and art history) and her husband, Professor Rob Nemes (history), stepped up to the Getty Art Challenge by recreating artist David Ryckaert III’s Interior of an Inn (ca. 1640). The oil painting is part of Colgate’s Picker Art Gallery collection and was on view with the gallery’s other 17thcentury Dutch and Flemish paintings in the spring exhibition, Works In Progress: Original Materials. “This image was an easy choice; it is one of my favorites in the exhibition,” Marlowe says. “I immediately saw a way to put toilet

42 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

ootball fans are known for being vocal about their team’s choices. Their opinions are strongly voiced at the annual NFL draft, when fans watch potential draftees and their families gather to listen to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell announce each selection. This year, the draft was held remotely, rather than in Las Vegas as originally planned. Caio Brighenti ’20 noticed one crucial aspect that would be missing from this year’s remote draft — NFL fans’ booing and cheering. So, he put a pin in his senior thesis to craft an online “boo-meter,” which gauges whether fans were virtually cheering or booing at each pick. Nowhere are fans more open about voicing their opinions than the internet, especially on the website Reddit. Brighenti’s program took NFL fans’ reactions and comments on Reddit and analyzed how each team’s fan base reacted in real time. “The program pulled every new comment posted to the general NFL and team-specific pages of Reddit, which I analyzed using a sentiment analysis tool to measure whether the comment was ‘angry/sad’ or ‘happy/ excited.’ Essentially, this indicated how each fan base was feeling in real time,” he says. Brighenti, a computer science and peace and conflict studies double major from São Paulo, Brazil, has a history of combining

Professors Elizabeth Marlowe and Rob Nemes

paper — the iconic consumer good of this moment in the pandemic — to good use.” To stage the piece, the professors cleared out their basement (finding the toy cat in the process) and enlisted the help of their two daughters — one as a subject, the other as the photographer. Marlowe, who taught Critical Museum Theory in the spring semester, adds that she believes the field of museum studies will “look back at this moment and think about the fact that so many people chose to engage with art in this shared, joyful, goofy, public way. What might that tell us about how museums can create community (even remotely), or about the role museums can play in times of trauma?” — Aleta Mayne

his interests in football and coding. Last season, he was a finalist in the NFL’s Big Data Bowl, competing by himself against many teams of multiple opponents. As a finalist, he received the opportunity to present his findings to spectators at an annual trade show in Indianapolis, many of whom were NFL executives. A Detroit Lions fan, Brighenti sees the internet, and social media in particular, as the supreme vessel for judging fans’ gut reactions to a pick. Though he conceived of the idea prior to the draft moving online, his program was more useful this year than ever. During the draft, Brighenti used 33 distinct meters to gauge reactions: one for each team as well as one dedicated to the controversial NFL commissioner, affectionately titled the “Goodell BooMeter,” which recorded more than 80 boos in the 30 seconds following Goodell’s first appearance on screen. “When I decided to do this project, I wasn’t sure if any sentiment analysis tool would really be able to capture how a fan base feels,” Brighenti says. “However, what you’d expect to see from each pick was perfectly translated to how the meters reacted.” Though many NFL fans tune in just for the first few picks, Brighenti’s program showed

TIA

Entrepreneurial Spirit Shines Innovators lean into change

During the draft, Brighenti used 33 distinct measures to gauge reactions. that fan reactions were strong throughout the entire draft, even as picks approached the hundreds in later rounds. “One interesting thing to witness was when the meter would completely flip from one direction to another,” Brighenti remarks. “San Francisco 49ers fans, for instance, were incredibly excited that Jerry Jeudy and CeeDee Lamb, the two best wide receiver prospects in the draft, were still available to them at pick 14, but the meter went from being maxed out positively to negatively in mere seconds when the 49ers took a defensive tackle instead.” As it turns out, social distancing didn’t change the behavior for which NFL fans are most well known: making their opinions on their team’s plays and trades heard loud and clear.

— Phoebe Sklansky ’22

Made with organic, whole ingredients, the breakfast solution called øats by Alique Fisher ’22 was one of this year's TIA ventures.

If there’s one thing an entrepreneur needs to know, it’s how to shift gears. With the COVID-19 pandemic throwing a wrench into their original plans, entrepreneurs with the Thought Into Action (TIA) Incubator have taken this mantra to heart, thinking on their feet and adapting to new circumstances. During a virtual mentor meeting on April 4, Andy Greenfield ’74, who is a co-founder of the TIA Incubator with Wills Hapworth ’07, encouraged this year’s group to lean into change. “An entrepreneur’s path is strewn with challenges, problems, disruptions — that’s the sport you all have chosen,” Greenfield said. “The mark of an entrepreneur is how they deal with those problems. Do they attack them, or do they cower from them?” The 2019–20 TIA cohort — consisting of 53 entrepreneurs — chose to attack their problems head on. Open to students, alumni, and community members, “the TIA program enables participants to go through the process of developing a solution to a problem or a challenge that they see in the world,” says Carolyn Strobel, the program’s director. “It teaches them the skills to build their own venture from the ground up and how to be flexible when things don’t turn out as expected.” Usually, the program culminates in Entrepreneur Weekend, during which the participants showcase their products and solutions. During the demo fair, each team sets up a booth and presents its venture to alumni, parents, faculty, and staff in hopes of fostering future business connections.

This year, the program needed to adapt to the changing circumstances — in the true spirit of entrepreneurship. “In TIA, we talk about the need to be adaptable and resilient,” Strobel says. “As entrepreneurs, our students often find out that the solution they envision at the beginning is not where they end up.” Michael Sciola, associate vice president for career initiatives, echoes this sentiment. “The whole TIA team has really been challenged to put our money where our mouth is, embrace disruptions, and create new solutions,” he says. This year’s Entrepreneur Weekend evolved into an online version of the demo fair, or the Virtual Venture Showcase. The showcase, which launched April 18, highlighted the 2019–20 TIA cohort’s 32 unique businesses, nonprofits, and campus initiatives. On the showcase website, visitors could read about these ventures, watch their video pitches, and actively help these projects grow by clicking the “I Can Help” button. Participating ventures ranged from øats, an organic, waste-free, overnight oats brand developed by Alique Fisher ’22, to social media marketing services that Sheila Dunne ’20 and Luke Goodwin’s company, DunneGoodwin, provides. The showcase was a success, hitting 1,500 visitors on the day it went live and then netting an average of 500 visitors per day. While TIA hopes to return to hosting the event in person next year, the virtual showcase will also be included. “That way, the world can join us in congratulating Colgate entrepreneurs,” remarks Sciola. “We’ve learned a valuable lesson — adapting to changing conditions without fear of failure is key to innovation.” Despite the roadblocks, Sciola sees the format change as an opening for the spirit of entrepreneurship to shine through. “This has been a great opportunity for our teams to think, ‘OK, this is the way things are. How can we move forward?’” — Phoebe Sklansky ’22

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 43

endeavor

idea

Pocket Money Taylor Llewellyn ’04 has found success in a line of functional hoodies — including the topical Quarantine Hoodie.

his past spring, Taylor Llewellyn ’04 was self-isolating with his wife and kids — and juggling a small business with homeschooling — when the idea hit him: Wouldn’t people appreciate a comfortable clothing item in which they could store everything they needed for a pandemic?

44 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

“You could shove in your mask, plastic gloves, hand sanitizer, and a kid’s homework assignment you needed to pull out between Zoom meetings,” Llewellyn says. The Quarantine Hoodie was born. The cheeky shelter-in-place accessory isn’t a one-off for the long-time entrepreneur. It joins a line of luxe but practical hoodies Llewellyn has been creating through his company The_Hoodie since the late fall of 2018. “The original product was the Dad Hoodie,” he says. “I have young children, and some buddies of mine and I were joking about how we’re lugging around these diaper bags with enough supplies to last for weeks.” He started designing a soft, hooded sweatshirt with a mesh lining full of pockets of different sizes to enable fathers to carry everything from diapers to sippy cups — without suffering the sartorial indignity of a diaper bag. After the product took off, on the strength of Father’s Day and baby shower sales, he started adding hoodies pitched to different consumers: the Mom Hoodie, the Dog Walker Hoodie, the Traveler Hoodie. While each hoodie follows the same design, they are branded and packaged differently to appeal to a variety of different customers. Growing up outside San Francisco, Llewellyn watched his mom succeed with a catering business and his dad struggle with a newspaper and golf equipment stores. “I saw what entrepreneurial success and entrepreneurial failure looked like,” he says. An education major, he says the

liberal arts education prepared him for life as an entrepreneur. “Being in small classes where the focus is on reading, writing, and articulating your thoughts was a great training ground.” After college, Llewellyn spent a summer on Martha’s Vineyard, where he came up with the idea to launch his first company — an online store called Tucker Blair, which sold preppy needlepoint belts —while earning an MBA at Duke. After that business

After the product took off … he started adding hoodies pitched to different consumers: the Mom Hoodie, the Dog Walker Hoodie, the Traveler Hoodie. took off, he tried to go bigger with a kids’ popsicle company called Squeaky Pops, but the business plan melted down. “I realized what I really like is creating these niche single-product businesses that are e-commerce driven, sell direct-to-consumer, and are lean and bootstrapped,” he says. The_Hoodie is just Llewellyn, operating out of a one-room office near his home outside D.C. and creating his products through a network of contractors and suppliers. Llewellyn invested in a premium product, with high-quality tri-blend fabric and double stitching on the pockets. At the same time, he strove to keep the price below $100 to make it accessible to people looking for a unique gift. In his first year, he sold more than 3,000 hoodies — and Llewellyn hopes to more than triple it this year to exceed 10,000. Of course, he says, the best outcome would be for his latest product to outlive its usefulness, while Llewellyn works on new ideas such as a Dad Vest he’s releasing this fall and a wearable beach towel for next summer. In the meantime, however, he’s hoping he can at least make social distancing a little more comfortable. “These are serious times, but sometimes you have to take a deep breath and just laugh,” he says. “If we can deliver a little bit of fun, and also make some people’s lives easier as they’re trying to carry around all of this stuff, then that’s the cherry on top.” — Michael Blanding

endeavor

online

Turning Reality Virtual For two alumni, a decline in face-to-face interaction means changing business models.

n January, the restaurant reservation platform Tock processed $1 million in client sales daily. In a short, five-day span, it dropped to zero. Many industries have experienced disruptions and pivoted their business models due to the COVID-19 pandemic, often getting creative with customer interactions. The restaurant industry is, perhaps, the most visible one to do so, with food spots transitioning to delivery and giving updates to diners via social media. Nick Kokonas ’90, co-owner of The Alinea Group and Tock’s CEO, saw it coming.

“We’re in 28 countries, so we could see the reservations in Hong Kong going to zero,” Kokonas says. “Then, we saw Seattle and the West Coast start going down in early March.” His answer was Tock to Go, a subset of the Cloud-based Tock platform in which restaurant employees can log in and manage operations such as outgoing deliveries and kitchen inventories. This streamlining makes it easier for food spots, especially those that don’t normally offer takeout and delivery, to serve hungry patrons. And, if the restaurants are organized, customer experiences are more seamless. Upward of 1,000 restaurants have been added to Tock to Go since its inception in March, and that number is growing daily. Kokonas, a former derivatives trader, isn’t sugarcoating the pandemic’s outlook, but is instead choosing to plan for the worst. “I don’t want this to be going on any more than anyone else does,” says Kokonas. “You could sit around and wallow in it and say, ‘Oh, it sucks to be quarantined, and I wish I could go to the beach.’ Or, you can actually do something.” The pandemic has been hard on restaurants, but it’s been arguably harder on their lifeblood: waiters, bartenders, and staff people. To help circumvent the economic effects on his employees, Kokonas gave $1,000 to each Alinea Group employee upon furlough in March, plus partial health care coverage. He’s not drawing a salary himself, and at the time of print, all of his workforce had been hired back for to-go operations at his Chicago restaurants. On the horizon, at the end of the pandemic, he sees hope. And booming business. “What happened in 1920 through 1928 [after the 1918 pandemic]? People partied their brains out. I think two years from now, restaurants will be packed.” While Kokonas is looking toward the future, Dulany Reeves Dent ’97 is living in the now. CEO of The Nanny Network, a childcare staffing agency serving the Baltimore and Washington, D.C., areas, Dent is supporting parents working from home through the new tech-based learning tool School@Home. At the onset of COVID-19, with stay-athome orders becoming commonplace, Dent saw a reduction in the amount of childcare providers requested through The Nanny Network. About 80% of the company’s business is temporary care, such as date night sitters or someone to stay home with a child at the last minute due to illness or school closures. Once it was apparent that people moving in and out of households was unsafe due to the easily transmissible virus, Dent had three objectives. First she wanted

to find a way for the children her company served to still get the one-on-one attention they were used to. Also, like Kokonas, she sought to take care of her employees in an uncertain time. Lastly, a working mom herself, she wanted to give parents adjusting to homeschooling a break. Virtual learning was the answer. The Nanny Network already had a technology platform to recruit, screen, and schedule caregivers, so Dent’s team reworked the interface to allow parents to sign up for and schedule School@Home sessions. “This way, from the safety of their home, caregivers can engage with kids through the School@ Home program and provide relief to the families, as well as use their skill set and continue to earn an income,” Dent says. Children, mostly between the ages of 6 and 10, sign on to a scheduled Zoom call with one of Dent’s e-Learning aids to complete schoolwork or enrichment activities for a set number of hours. The nannies already employed by Dent have backgrounds in education or tutoring, so she trusted them with this new business venture. “We knew our caregivers were great educators just by nature, but [some of them are] coming out of the woodwork with even more education experience than we realized,” she says. Kokonas and Dent are both evaluating their circumstances daily, and their readyfor-change approach has helped them succeed in the COVID-19 era. They chalk it up to creativity and a need to push forward in an uncertain time. “At a time of crisis like this,” Kokonas says, “you have to be resolute.” — Rebecca Docter

Dent says she was inspired in her career by former Colgate economics professors Kevin Rask and Jill Tiefenthaler. "I did an independent study with [Tiefenthaler], and then I ended up writing my economics thesis on the gender wage gap." Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 45

SALMAGUNDI 13 Words (or fewer)

Winners will receive a Colgate Magazine tote bag and will be announced in the next issue.

Clipped From the Colgate Maroon, Feb. 13, 1998

He acknowledged that the information age is indeed informative, but that what machines have “made us think and do, as well as not think and not do,” troubles him. Vonnegut warned his audience that, by increasingly relying on computers to carry out daily functions, they may very well deprive themselves of “the adventure of finding out what humans can do.” — “Kurt Vonnegut Lectures to Sold-Out Audience”

104 Colgate Magazine Summer 2020

Special Collections and University Archives

Submit your clever caption of 13 words or fewer for this vintage Colgate photo to magazine@ colgate.edu or attn: Colgate Magazine, 13 Oak Dr., Hamilton, NY 13346.

Were You Listening?

Match the Colgate professor emeritus to his or her quote:

In chapel, prayer may come last. But in the classroom, the world (and, often, in chapel too), questions contain strange benedictions. Certain questions — if we really live with them — can bring us to life. Kant’s four great ones we do well to remember: How can I know? For what can I hope? What ought I do? What is it to be human?

2 3

For anyone who loves teaching as I did, one of the things you need is an opportunity to communicate what you care about. Activism gives me immediate communication.

The constant is a loyalty, deep and sincere. Students leave here surrounded by the spirit of place and in love with an institution that has won their minds and hearts. Why? Perhaps because of the beauty of the space, but more likely because of a superb faculty and staff that daily give their all. It would be hard to overestimate the quality of Colgate’s faculty — teacher/scholar/citizens of note: pedagogical innovators, doing internationally respected research, and claiming their place as stakeholders in this institution. You could not be taught better anywhere. Full stop.

My favorite spot on campus: Little Hall. I plan on haunting it. I will be entertaining. I promise.

→ Wanda Warren Berry, professor of philosophy and religion emerita

→ John Knecht, Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of art & art history and film & media studies emeritus

→ Coleman Brown, professor of philosophy and religion and university chaplain emeritus (now decesased)

→ Jane Pinchin, Thomas A. Bartlett Chair and professor of English emerita

Answers on pg. 83

Summer 2020 Colgate Magazine 105

13 Oak Drive Hamilton, NY 13346-1398

In This Issue

Float inside enzymes with chemistry professor Ernest Nolen

Fly to the aid of the nation’s health care workers p.38

Score an average of +1.21 over par p.20

Join Colgate’s EOC to develop strategies during crises p.34

Hire a virtual nanny to school your kids while you work from home p.45

Work the evening shift in an NYC emergency department p.95

Break a sweat hiking the Haute Route p.75

Celebrate reunion through a historical lens p.64

p.19

Build a stone 1oth-century French castle — by hand p.61

Step up to the Getty Art Challenge and recreate a famous painting p.42

Right foot red: It’s your move in the University Twister challenge p.104

jill calder

Use 3D printing to make protective masks and shields p.18

Rediscover your career through a stint as a deliveryman p.8