Colgate Magazine — Autumn 2019

AUTUMN 2019

SHE’S THE ONE

These alumnae are blazing trails P.20

also in this issue

The Third-Century Plan P.26

look Kaitlyn Macdonald ’23 from Southborough, Mass., participated in the Basecamp Wilderness Adventure on Moss Island, which was one of many pre-orientation programs offered. “This was my first time outdoor rock climbing,” she says, “and I loved it!”

mark diorio

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 1

Contents

AUTUMN 2019 President’s Message

4

Letters

5

Voices

My Husband’s Near-Death Taught Me Gratitude After a roadside bomb critically injured her husband, Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 experienced a whirlwind of emotions.

6

Lessons in Living (and Dying) Students partner with community elders in Professor Meika Loe’s Sociology of Aging and the Life course.

8

Scene

Colgate News 10

Discover

Going With Her Gut Robin Flannery ’02 is taking a closer look at the benefits of probiotics for infants.

16

The Science of Slumber Professor Lauren Philbrook and students are researching how stress affects children’s sleep patterns.

17

Real-World Research Students spanned the globe exploring a range of topics during the summer.

17

She’s the One Jeanine Nicholson ’86 and other alumnae who are the “first”

20

Essentially Colgate: The Third-Century Plan President Brian W. Casey, his cabinet, and board members lay out the University’s bold road map for success.

26

Big Brain Theory 18

Ask a Professor Laura Klugherz explains how chamber music enhances living and learning.

Tintern Abbey 2019

19

A poem by Tristan Niskanen ’20, inspired by his travels abroad

9

2 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

The Write Stuff An introduction to the Class of 2023 Parfait Kabore Corinna Yee Justin Moore Talia Yavorek

Cover Photo: Bryan Meltz

34

illustration: Alex Green; photograph: Bryan meltz

Professor Ken Segall is developing computer chips that behave like human neurons.

Endeavor

When It Comes to This Soda, Less Is More Steve Hersh ’87 refines your guilty pleasure.

Vice President for Communications Laura H. Jack

40

Managing Editor Aleta Mayne

Laura McDonald Is Making Your ’90s Dreams Come True

Assistant Editor Rebecca Docter Communications Director Mark Walden

This 2010 alumna has vintage vibes.

Chief Creative Officer Tim Horn

41

Art Director Karen Luciani

Helping Heal From Within

Designer Katriel Pritts University Photographer Mark DiOrio

Through yoga, Stephen Redmon ’80 teaches people to cope with trauma.

Production Assistant Kathy Jipson

42

Frank Morris ’61 is in the Smithsonian's History Maker series.

Hat Tricks Brenda Killackey-Jones ’96 gets spooky with her mythological taxidermy.

43

Breaking Down Blockchain Samantha Radocchia ’11 explains this lifechanging technology.

43

Alumni News

44

Salmagundi

84

Contributors: Gordon Brillon, web content specialist; Daniel DeVries, media relations director; Sara Furlong, advancement communications manager; David Herringshaw, digital production specialist; Jason Kammerdiener ’10, web manager; Katherine Laube, art director; Brian Ness, video journalism coordinator; John Painter, director of athletics communications; Kristin Putman, social media strategist Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt. Colgate Magazine Volume XLIX Number 1 Colgate Magazine is a quarterly publication of Colgate University.

Online: colgate.edu/magazine Email: magazine@colgate.edu Telephone: 315-228-7407

illustration: mercedes debellard

Change of Address: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398 Telephone: 315-228-7453

There are no rituals for that kind of grief — no poems or tributes. No mourning, no resolution.

Life plays out in a purgatory of what-ifs.

Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 p. 6

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.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 3

President’s Message Measuring Colgate

I

n this issue of Colgate Magazine, in addition to the usual features, profiles, and alumni news columns, there is an extended section on the creation and implications of Colgate’s Third-Century Plan. The development of this long-term plan for Colgate was a lengthy process involving multiple meetings of the Board of Trustees, innumerable meetings with various campus committees, and many drafting and redrafting sessions. While I took the lead on the writing of the plan, in truth, the plan has many authors — as it should. The Office of the Provost and Dean of the Faculty drove much of the academic sections, the admission and financial aid offices took on other sections, and the athletics department weighed in where it should have.

Beneath crafting the words of the plan was other work. For example, the trustees called for, and received, multiple financial models to better understand the longterm financial implications of the plan and the long-term set of building projects the initiatives would require. They argued, rightfully, that this plan should not only make Colgate academically stronger, but also financially stronger. It is our obligation to leave Colgate stronger, in all ways, than it was when we began this planning process.

Plans are plans, of course. They aren’t action. And they aren’t guarantees of anything. Most colleges and universities have some form of strategic plan posted somewhere on their webpages. These are usually written when a new president comes in, or when an anniversary looms.

Others are written when a fundraising campaign is about to begin. All of these factors were in place as we set out to write our own strategic plan. There was a new administration, the University was planning its Bicentennial celebration, and the trustees were considering the steps Colgate should take for the needed fundraising campaign.

All the usual factors were in place.

But the planning efforts never seemed usual or predictable. At all times there was an unspoken but palpable source of energy.

All of us engaged in the drafting knew of Colgate’s strengths. We all knew what makes the University distinct. We were proud of those strengths and those sources

4 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

of distinction. The writing was not driven by nots of higher education find themselves crisis or concern. There was, instead, a sense increasingly separated, we need to consider that Colgate should be — even more clearly how best to ensure our place at the table of than it is today — known as one of the leading institutions. nation’s truly premier institutions of higher This leads me to something else you will education. The idea (a version of which is not see in this issue’s article on The Thirdrepeated at the front of the piece on the Century Plan: a discussion on how we will plan) was that, while alumni knew what measure success. Or, perhaps more frankly: makes Colgate strong, the world needed to against whom we measure ourselves. know this too. There was a sense that this is As I said earlier, and as I say in all settings our time. when I am speaking about Colgate, I have There was also a strong sense that Colgate always known Colgate to be distinctive should not develop a short-term plan with in a world in which few colleges and priorities that would be replaced in five universities actually are. We are a liberal years. There was instead an awareness that arts college at our core, but we are a large the great colleges and universities have long- one, with a unique personality. Alone with term views and a long-term commitment perhaps only Davidson College, we are a to change. When one looks underneath true undergraduate liberal arts college that those stories of institutions that seemed to hosts Division I athletics. We are rural, but have suddenly gained strength, increasing worldly as well. Our students apply to other in reach or reputation “overnight,” there is liberal arts colleges, but also to leading, almost always years of planning and hard large, private universities. U.S. News and work that took place beforehand. Overnight World Report categorizes us, rightfully, as success in higher education takes years. And one of the national colleges. But our faculty patience. And focus. members are supported much like those Colgate has not always had this. Colgate at research universities, with scholarly has long enjoyed a privileged place in productivity and tenure expectations seen American higher education. The University at these institutions. has long attracted excellent students, This distinctiveness is a profound source faculty, and staff. It has long enjoyed a of strength, even if it sometimes means it beautiful campus. It has always enjoyed a takes more than a sentence or two to explain type of uniqueness. We are a liberal arts to people what Colgate is. Colby College college, but a large one. We have Division can look to Williams for its aspirational I athletics. We attract a distinct type of goals. Notre Dame looks at Duke. The student — one who is sociable and engaged, University of Chicago keeps an eye on Yale. one who wishes to act in the world. These We, at Colgate, need to keep an eye on a unique factors have made us sui generis, number and a variety of leading colleges and uniquely Colgate. Why, then, plan? Why not universities to see how we are doing, and to simply be Colgate? see what we should be doing better.

We needed to plan, simply, because So The Third-Century Plan seeks to do two Colgate needs to be Colgate, but it also things at once. It seeks to understand and needs to be a stronger Colgate. A Colgate celebrate that which makes Colgate unique. that attracts more of the best students in the And, at the same time, it asks us to look at country — Colgate students, for sure — but a number of leading national institutions selected from a larger cohort of applicants to see what we can adopt and to see what so we can be sure to enroll the best of our levels of achievement we can reach as well students. We need to be a Colgate that, (if not surpass). when competing with Williams and Duke And so we begin this third century at for new faculty, attracts the leading teachers Colgate. We have a road map now; one that and scholars to our campus. We need to add should serve us for not only years but also those buildings we have been missing for decades. We have things to do. We have decades (especially in the arts), and we need faculty to hire and students to attract. We to take a hard look at those buildings on our have buildings to restore or build. We have campus that detract from its beauty and stories to share with the world. But as we function (need I mention Gate House?). know on this campus, and as I hope the We need to seek to be stronger because to alumni know, all of this is possible. fail to do so — to fail to strive — is the most It is, after all, our time. dangerous thing we can do. The world of higher education is extremely competitive.

— Brian W. Casey All the leading colleges and universities fight for students, faculty, resources, and regard.

To stand still would be to fall behind. And in Read the full Third-Century Plan at colgate.edu/ a world in which the haves and the havethirdcenturyplan.

Social media snippets

Letters Trusted Source

Global Warming: Science, Not Politics Having been intimately involved with natural resource conservation and use for the last 43 years, I read the Green Edition (summer 2019) with interest.

Congratulations to all on campus and in the wider community for the prudent environmental developments across the years.

Those reflect the industrial and agricultural accomplishments that have kept our nation among the foremost, if not the foremost, in successful and productive environmental management.

I commend Colgate for concrete steps taken, such as reducing energy and water consumption. That said, I am disappointed with the extent that political science frequently overrides natural science. Sadly, disregarding the scientific method has become typical for many in this country and others, as exemplified by the “Inquisitor” panel on climate change.

Galileo had it right with earlier inquisitors, and there is solace that I and the 32,000 other signatories of the Global Warming Petition Project will be proven correct. My hope is that we strive again toward grounding in natural science so that societies may avert the tragedies that will come due if the Green New Deal and similar schemes of politicized science are enacted.

Ralph R. Sacrison ’76

In a recent survey to measure alumni engagement (conducted

by GG+A SurveyLab), 84.2% of respondents said Colgate Magazine is their main preference for receiving information from the University. A total of 4,798, or 17%, participated in the survey, which is above industry average.

Appreciating CNY History “Before Payne’s Farm” (summer 2019, p. 27) hit home with me.

At Colgate I was focused on academics, determined to provide a return on the gift my parents gave me. That focus paid off, and I have always appreciated the unique values of my Colgate education: an ability to see connections between disparate disciplines and a passion for continuous learning.

These days, however, I have a few regrets about my Colgate experience: One regret is that I did not explore and experience the history and culture of the Chenango Valley and surrounding region. I now find myself reading and exploring the history and culture of every place I visit, including the central New York area. In exploring the history of the Erie Canal, I was surprised to find out there was a Chenango Canal that went right through Hamilton, complete with locks and reservoirs and help from French canal experts. I was right next to this history in my Colgate days but had no clue.

Thanks for publishing articles on the history of Colgate and the Hamilton area. The sense of place that these articles provide adds an important dimension to our path through life.

Tim Schneeberger ’72

Love this cover.

Kandi Alfaro P’19 @kandialfaro “Plan. Act. Change.” (summer 2019, p. 32): Great direction — keep going.

Barbara Morrill (widow of Dexter Morrill ’60) “New Residence Hall Named in Honor of Prof. Jane Lagoudis Pinchin,” (summer 2019, p. 14):

Wow, I’m so delighted to read this! I will never forget women’s literature classes with Profs Pinchin and Maurer!

Pamela Mudge-Wood ’82

Jane Pinchin was interim president on 9/11, and I will always remember her steady leadership during that time.

Love this!

Scott Hudson ’03 Fitting tribute to someone who has meant so much to Colgate in so many ways. Well done!

Jim Leach

As a member of the Class of 1974, the first year women were accepted as freshmen, I applaud this well-deserved honor! Brava, Jane Pinchin! Brava!

Carmela McCain Simmons ’74

Call for nominations

Colgate Board of Trustees The Nominating, Governance, and Trustee Development Committee of the Board of Trustees welcomes recommendations for new members to bring guidance and wisdom to the University’s governing board.

The board seeks energetic and committed people with expertise in areas including, but not limited to: higher education, finance, the arts, technology, global learning, legal affairs, marketing, or media relations. Nominees should display the ability to exercise informed, independent judgment and to act in the best interests of Colgate to properly steward the University’s academic, program, and fiscal resources. Candidates should be willing to fully immerse themselves in the work of the board. They should place Colgate as a priority in terms of time and philanthropy, and be committed to staying abreast of the changing landscape of higher education.

The full board meets three times a year, and trustees are expected to participate in committee meetings and conference calls at other times. Trustees are also often asked to attend and/or host other University events. Each year, the board welcomes three to five new trustees for three-year terms that may be followed by two additional three-year terms.

Recommendations may be made by emailing Hanna RodriguezFarrar, Chief of Staff, Secretary to the Board of Trustees, at hrf@ colgate.edu; or mail to: Nominating, Governance, and Trustee Development Committee, c/o Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346.

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

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 5

Voices

reflection

My Husband’s Near-Death Taught Me Gratitude Sifting through the rubble of pain and doubt, Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 discovered unexpected treasure.

y life imploded with a phone call. While reporting from Iraq, my husband had been hit by a roadside bomb. “Critically wounded ... shrapnel to the brain ... might not make it through surgery...” I could barely absorb the meaning of the words.

M

6 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

He was transferred to the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. When I got there, his room was meat-locker cold to minimize swelling. Bob lay naked on a bed, partially covered by a sheet—his body white as marble, still as a sculpture. For a moment, I let myself believe he was asleep. But

his head was pockmarked with shrapnel wounds, a ragged trail of staples closing his scalp over a horribly distorted brain.

Seventy-two hours later, he was flown to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where he’d be comatose for five weeks—eyes open without seeing, moaning without speaking. My world shrank down to caring for our four children (all of them under the age of 14) and waiting for their father to wake up.

One day, out of the blue, he did: Bob couldn’t recall who was president of the United States, but he could say “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” We were elated that he could talk at all.

At a rehab hospital in New York, he began the grueling work of relearning how to string sentences together, read, and write.

That’s where my euphoria started to fade.

I sat across from him as the therapist held up a plastic head of lettuce. “What’s this called?” she chirped. “Salad?” Bob’s eyes darted toward me apologetically. I smiled, trying not to mouth the right answer. After college, I’d fallen in love with his inquisitive mind, the fact that he could speak Mandarin and easily explain things like the Six-Day War. Bob was here, and not.

A month and a half later, thin and tired, he walked through our front door. The twins ran in to hug him, waving welcome home signs made with crayons and glitter.

We were a family again, snuggling on the couch watching hours of TV, as the children touched the places on his face where shards of shrapnel were still working their way out.

With the fear of Bob dying in full remission, tricky emotions filled the void.

Just weeks before the explosion, he’d taken over for Peter Jennings as co-anchor of ABC World News Tonight. His recovery would be lengthy, the outcome uncertain. How would he cope with the death of that dream? And what of the hard work we’d both invested in his career — constantly pulling up stakes and moving to yet another city as he made his way up the ladder? If he could no longer work, how would we raise four kids on my freelance copywriter income? I felt like a shrew even thinking about money.

In his early recovery, everyday moments felt like a series of paper cuts — the joke he didn’t get, the conversation that ricocheted around the dinner table too fast for him to follow. The meeting with our lawyer, who’d advised I take control of our assets until things stabilized. “I don’t understand,” Bob said, looking up from a pile of papers as the lawyer awaited his signature. “Why is everything in my wife’s name?” His confusion was a gut punch.

For months, I’d been pumping out good vibes like a cheerleader, staying upbeat for

the kids, arranging my supportive-wife facade for everyone else. “Your husband looks so good!” Cue the polite smile. “You’re so lucky.” Beam the grateful look. But the fact is, loss that falls short of death is complicated. A therapist told me about “ambiguous loss,” something experienced by a quiet club that grieves in the shadows: women who’ve miscarried, parents of disabled children or addicted children, people with a chronically ill spouse. The death of a thousand dreams. There are no rituals for that kind of grief — no poems or tributes. No mourning, no resolution. Life plays out in a purgatory of what-ifs.

“I actually envy you,” I confided to my widowed friend one day (radical honesty being our bond). “You have nowhere to go but up. What if Bob never really comes back?”

It’s been 13 years, and after a miraculous recovery, Bob is back. He’s reporting, speaking Mandarin, traveling to the remote places that fascinate him. And he’s heroically peaceful about what wasn’t.

“How do you know I wouldn’t have failed as the anchor?” he jokes — sense of humor restored.

I sometimes wonder whether I’ve been looking at this all wrong. Maybe instead of ambiguous loss, the trick is to be open to ambiguous gain. Like when Bob went to our kids’ back-to-school night for the first time in several years — something he’d never have been able to do as an anchor. (“So this is what I’ve been missing!” he said, sitting in a third-grader’s cramped desk, reading a note our daughter had left for us.) Or the way he started packing lunches, making the ham and cheese sandwiches and slicing apples. Our catastrophe allowed us to raise millions of dollars for injured veterans. And it allowed me to write — not just press kits for kitty litter and plantar wart cream, but essays and books from my heart.

When Bob was in a coma, a friend gave me a string of lapis worry beads. I’d clutch them when I couldn’t sleep, putting a name to my many worries until I could finally drift off. At a certain point I renamed them gratitude beads: Now when I’m stressed, I touch each one and name something I’m grateful for—my children’s good health, a coven of incredible girlfriends, my able body to hike and garden, my intact husband....

And it works. Nothing ambiguous about it at all. ●

— Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 is a freelance writer, speaker, and co-author of the New York Times best-selling book In an Instant. This essay was originally published in the June issue of O, The Oprah Magazine.

“ Kagame’s autocratic manner penetrates the lives of Rwandans in much the same way as did those who preceded him: the head of state is to lead his people toward reason and eliminate enemies by terror.”

IN THE MEDIA “ To spend that time on the Gulf for me in this meditative state counting wolfberries and crabs, it taught me a lot about who I was and the work people are doing every day.”

— Excerpt from Professor Susan Thomson’s book Rwanda: From Genocide to Precarious Peace, which was reviewed by Nairobi Business Monthly

— Professor CJ Hauser appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers to discuss her new book, Family of Origin (Doubleday, 2019).

“ It is too soon to know whether this newly acquired power will lead to a radical change in the “ On Instagram, manufacturing fake political structure of the island followers is a ubiquitous tactic, and, if so, what type of change.” one that’s churned out at least — Jacqueline Villarrubia-Mendoza, 95 million near-perfect human a sociology and anthropology forgeries for you to brush past in professor, in her article about the digital hallways, unaware.”

Puerto Rico for the North American — Emma Grey Ellis ’14 writes on Wired.com about this problem affecting online engagement numbers

Congress on Latin America

“ Images of a bloodied and beaten Haidar galvanized Sahrawi resistance and shocked many foreign observers.”

“ I used to think about being a superhero, because that was — Professor Jacob Mundy in an article going to be my way out. I’d get on “the Gandhi of Western Sahara,” some superpowers, and I could be Aminatou Haidar, on Ozy.com strong … I could help my mother.”

— Derrick Darby ’88 to the Atlantic about the challenges African Americans face on the path to success

“ At TIA, I learned the importance of really listening to customers and finding the right product to fit the market.”

— Matthew Glick ’19, who developed the Gipper app through Colgate’s Thought Into Action, in U.S. News & World Report

— Political science professor Michael Hayes in a commentary on Syracuse.com

“ It was dark and the waves were high and it was hard to see the land, but I could see lights from the cars in the parking lot, which gave me extra adrenaline.”

← Lee and her husband, Bob Woodruff ’83, started the nonprofit Bob Woodruff Foundation to assist injured service members and their families heal from the wounds of war.

Is our current health care system really so badly broken that we can’t build on it?

“ We would think the steady state for the 30-year bond would equal the natural interest rate plus inflation expectations plus the liquidity and risk premium.”

— Pat Budny ’80 recalls being the first person to ever swim across Lake Erie to GoErie.com

— Assistant Professor of Economics Rich Higgins to Fortune.com

“ Health care, especially for seniors, is so much more than just an insurance plan.”

“ Mentoring is about challenging mentees and pushing them to do — Caroline Anderson ’12, executive their best, not making their life director of Medicare and retirement easy.” programs in Virginia for members of UnitedHealthcare, to the Richmond Times-Dispatch

— Anita Corbett ’88 to Nature Reviews Cancer about mentoring young scientists

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 7

teaching

Lessons in Living (and Dying) Unusual partnerships lead to lasting bonds.

he students wore earplugs, gloves stuffed with tissues, goggles smeared with Vaseline, and heavy shoes. They had to concentrate to hear my instructions over the static playing in the room. I watched as they awkwardly moved around the classroom, completing tasks like sorting laundry, buttoning up a shirt, counting change, and writing a note and putting it in an envelope.

Half an hour later, the “old age” simulation ended. “I was so nervous,” one student said, “and I had the hardest time buttoning this shirt.” “I couldn’t hear anything,” commented another. “My feet felt so heavy, and I wasn’t sure I could do this,” another added. These high achievers were relieved to have accomplished the tasks to the best of their abilities. And yet, they found meaning in the ways in which their perception of ability had shifted.

Experiencing agency in the context of constrained mobility and balance, hearing, and tactile potential — for a mere 30 minutes — accompanied by the associated anxiety and decreased confidence, gave students a sense of what it might feel like to be old.

My hope with this exercise is that students in Sociology of Aging and the Life Course can better empathize with elders, including those with whom they’ll spend many hours during the class. As part of this reading- and research-intensive course, each student must dedicate at least 30 hours outside of class time to a project in which the student befriends a local elder, conducts a two-part

T

8 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

life history interview, and works with this elder to convert some aspect of their life history into a five-minute digital story.

In the class, students also reflect on their own generational contexts and individual turning points as young adults. We read about how young adulthood in America, particularly among the privileged, has turned into an extended period of life, much like old age. We talk about how many of them would soon be “boomerang kids,” returning to living at home with their parents after college. We discuss middle age, a time of life when the “weathering” effects of racism, poverty, and global beauty norms are starting to set in. Eventually we get to the reality of our aging population. Students participate in the old age simulation, and when we get to the death and dying unit, they write their own obituaries.

Twenty-year-olds writing their obituaries? Yes, I’m serious. For the first time, they are not writing about résumélevel accomplishments. They are reflecting on what has given their lives meaning; they are asking themselves what constitutes a full life (see sidebar). This always results in a rich discussion about truly living, while at the same time, normalizing dying in our death-denying culture. This year, in particular, these conversations about death helped us to collectively grieve when we were called to — which was something none of us expected.

Almost a month before graduation last semester, Sociology of Aging students, their elder partners, and family and friends

attended a big-screen viewing of the digital stories. We crammed into Lawrence 20 to watch and learn about the life stories of 14 elders who had transformed the students’ lives. We dedicated the screening to Alice Bowie, a former resident at Madison Lane, who had passed away during spring break.

In her digital story, Alice’s voice rang strong as she talked about crossing a giant bridge on her way to Niagara Falls and admiring the beautiful clouds in the sky during an unforgettable family vacation. What we didn’t know then was that nonagenarian John Morris, former dean of the faculty and acting president at Colgate, who sat in the audience and chuckled at his own reminiscences of dating his late wife, would leave us just a few weeks later. But that day in Lawrence, we laughed and cried together, as students and elders traded inspiring stories and congratulated one another on their collaborative projects.

Our group bonded together through unique forces, some outside of our control.

First, although students and elders sign a contract to meet three times during the semester, this group defied all expectations, many meeting and talking by phone weekly, if not more. As I’ve found in previous years, the pairs oftentimes end up having more in common with each other than one might expect. For example, this past semester, Alice and Allison found that they both value family above all else. Meanwhile, Julia and Wynn enjoy sharing travel stories and reflecting on the meaning of life. And every morning in Lineberry Natatorium, Sylvia and Liv (who is on the swim team) saw each other and started their days together.

Second, for all of us, losing elder partners during the semester was new and challenging. Past digital stories have been used in memorial services, but this level of loss had never happened during the semester of our partnerships, and never within mere days after talking with these elders. For some students, these were their first experiences losing people close to them.

We grieved together as a class. We revisited the topic of meaningful lives and saw how those elders achieved this. Then we connected with relatives and friends of the deceased and shared our projects. Some of us went to Madison Lane to show Alice’s digital story and discuss her life with the residents. We rushed to put the projects online so that family members — including John Morris’s faraway family and friends — could access the digital stories. At the same time, elder Hamilton residents who had attended the screening wrote emails expressing their appreciation for the digital projects. Some Hamilton residents who had

john morris digital story by matt freniere ’20

VOICES

VOICES never participated in a life history project volunteered to be part of future courses. All of this was overwhelming, but also affirming.

Throughout the last decade, approximately 50 local elders have been central to the success of this course and have helped transform students’ lives.

Those relationships, and the course, will continue. What a gift.

Tintern Abbey 2019 Upon arrival Center stones in a river valley We walk amongst the ruins Like we’re ones too

— Meika Loe is a sociology and women’s studies professor who is author of Aging Our Way: Lessons for Living from 85 and Beyond (Oxford University Press, 2011). An ethnographer, she has spent the last 15 years following elders, walking with them through their daily rituals. Loe’s form of immersion also involves volunteering for hospice, attending town hall meetings on aging, and visiting care facilities.

The birds have the strongest voices in this valley I think the river is Wye But I don’t know Why has the universe brought me here today?

I had a picnic with my thoughts

Watch last semester’s digital stories at colgate. edu/lessonsinliving.

And added a layer of dust to this history It’s this abbey or Abbey Road magical mystery Spiritual religious or just musical

What constitutes a meaningful life?

Switching angles to stay out of shade To stare at the sun on stone

(responses from students, but often echoed by elders)

To sit and just be alone Vannessa Lawrence ’19 and Dot Willsey

I wonder if that tree bloomed today Inside now and the ghosts don’t talk

⚫ Cultivate a sense of purpose

This empty skeleton is full of peaceful

⚫ Pursue strong connections

breath

⚫ Experience love

These columns still dream of heaven

⚫ Don’t regret, just learn

Maybe I think I’m speaking for myself

Why am I celebrating this old ruin? too

⚫ Approach everything as a learning experience

How convenient at the cross

⚫ Surround yourself with people you love ⚫ Stay true to yourself

Haley Greer ’20 and Jane Todd

The sun looks me in my eyes So I sit and wait Maybe it’s time to pray

⚫ Live in the moment ⚫ Make a positive impact ⚫ Pay it forward ⚫ Do what you enjoy ⚫ Honor nature Over the summer, Loe started creating a new sociology course called Death, Dying, and Grieving.

— Tristan Niskanen ’20 is an English major from Snomass Village, Colo., who self-published his book of poems titled Big Man Small Europe after traveling abroad last summer.

Julia Blackwell ’20 and Wynn Egginton Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 9

CAMPUS LIFE | ART | ATHLETICS | INITIATIVES | CULTURE | GLOBAL REACH

faculty

SCENE

Fresh Faces

A

s first-year students moved into residence halls, a new complement of professors took up their posts in classrooms and offices. The University welcomed 58 new faculty members to campus alongside the Class of 2023. The roster also includes three new members of the head coaching staff and one assistant coach.

“Each new faculty member brings a distinctive personality to the teaching staff at the University,” says Provost and Dean of the Faculty Tracey E. Hucks ’87, MA’90.

Here are just a handful of those personalities:

Ynesse Abdul-Malak, assistant professor of sociology and anthropology, returns to Colgate after serving as a visiting assistant professor. Her research interests include issues related to racial and gender inequality, health disparity, and disability studies. She enjoys teaching courses on race, aging, gender, immigration, medical sociology, Caption ebissim de and research methodology. simendus eos id quam

Supporting Student Veterans

C

olgate joins 21 prestigious institutions committed to transforming higher education and college access for student veterans through its new partnership with the Service to School (S2S) VetLink Program.

S2S connects veteran applicants with partner schools like Colgate during the undergraduate application process and works with partner colleges to create awareness of how veterans’ military service has prepared them for success in academia. This collaborative

10 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

perspective and leadership that veterans bring into the classroom,” says Christine Schwartz, S2S CEO. Kevin Varga ’16 was a member of the Marine Corps before coming to Colgate, and he later served for a year as an S2S mentor himself. He said it was initially hard to adjust on a college campus where most students were younger than him, but that changed after a few weeks. “All of the students I encountered were friendly and accepting,” Varga says.

“The professors and staff were even more understanding and curious of my nontraditional background. I thrived in the small classroom settings and cherished the close relationships I formed with professors.”

— Dan DeVries

faccus dolutem quis re

Neta Alexander, assistantaut con exeruptus professor of film and media studies, comes from New York University, where she was a PhD candidate. Alexander’s teaching specialties include film and media history and theory, new media, and science and technology studies. Her first book, Failure (Polity Books), has just been published.

Michael Fethes Connolly, assistant professor of economics, comes from Boston College, where he was a PhD candidate.

Fethes’ teaching specialties include financial economics and macroeconomics. His research interests include banking, macrofinance, and real estate.

Robert Davis, assistant professor of mathematics, comes from

mark diorio

Partnership

approach provides partner schools with an effective way to identify, evaluate, and accept qualified veterans for undergraduate programs while helping veterans to find a top college that is the best fit for their academic and personal goals.

Together, S2S and partner colleges are transforming outcomes for veterans seeking higher education and increasing access to exceptional academic programs with high graduation rates. S2S provides veterans with free academic counseling and mentorship and has helped more than 1,500 veterans gain admission into the county’s best colleges.

“Colgate has shown its commitment to enrolling and supporting student veterans and has identified the unique

Harvey Mudd College, where he served as a visiting assistant professor. Davis’ teaching specialties include linear algebra, combinatorics, and abstract algebra. His research interests include polyhedral combinatorics, discrete geometry, and combinational commutative algebra.

Jacob Goldberg, assistant professor of chemistry, returns to Colgate after serving as a visiting assistant professor. Goldberg conducted post-doctoral research at MIT, where he studied the role of zinc ions in neurotransmission.

His teaching specialties include general chemistry and biochemistry, and his research interests include chemical biology, biophysical chemistry, and bioinorganic chemistry.

Ryan Hall, assistant professor of Native American studies and history, comes from Northern Arizona University, where he served as an assistant professor.

Hall’s teaching specialties include Native American history, U.S. history, North American frontiers

Amy Swanson

Ynesse Abdul-Malak

and borderlands, and global indigenous history.

13 bits

Paul Humphrey, assistant professor of LGBTQ Studies, comes from Monmouth University, where he served as an assistant professor in world languages and cultures.

Humphrey’s teaching specialties include gender and sexuality studies, Caribbean studies, and Spanish and French language and literature.

Osvaldo Sandoval-Leon, assistant professor of Spanish, comes from Michigan State University, where he was a PhD candidate.

His teaching specialties include the Spanish language and Latin American and Spanish peninsular theater.

Amy Swanson, assistant professor of dance, comes from Northwestern University, where she was a PhD candidate.

Swanson’s teaching specialties include contemporary dance, dance history and theory, African gender and sexuality studies, and African expressive culture.

Osvaldo SandovalLeon

1 Professors Matthew Miller and Mahadevi Ramakrishnan led a group of 16 students through the TriRhena region (the border triangle of France, Germany, and Switzerland) last May to help them understand the area’s microcultures.

Art

Behind the Masks

C

2

hapel House has recently added 10 African masks to its art collection. This mask, from Liberia, was used by the Dan people for entertainment. It is sometimes called a runner mask because the Gunyega masquerader — representing a spirit — competes in footraces against the youth. Chapel House Director Steven Kepnes and Carol Ann Lorenz, associate professor of Native American studies emerita, collaborated on the effort to bring these masks to the space, expanding the representation of world religions within the collection.

Several of the masks were procured by Lorenz in her travels and were displayed in her office for teaching purposes up until her recent retirement.

To support a student population that is aware of the importance of mental health, the Counseling and Psychological Services center offers 10–12 group therapy sessions a week.

3 Football has four new captains: Aidan Gaertner ’20, Cam Rohr ’20, Jovaun Woolford ’20, and Grant Breneman ’21.

4 This fall, Under Armour became the official outfitter for all 25 varsity sports.

5 Spill something juicy at Soul Bowl, a new açaí café on Lebanon Street.

6 A sampling of student summer internships: the New York Lizards, the U.S. District Attorney’s Office, and the NYC Ballet

living writers

“I’ve learned nothing about my life. I’m probably stupider than I was at age 12, but I keep writing… I used to think age brings wisdom, but it brings confusion.

Confusion is a great state to write from.”

— Novelist John Banville, who received the 2005 Booker Prize for The Sea, visited campus as part of this semester’s Living Writers series.

Illustrations by Toby Triumph

▼ Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 11

SCENE

▲ 7 Colgate’s Writers’ Conference in June featured workshops such as Seeing the Forest and the Trees: A YA Workshop with Amy Rose Capetta.

8 Students can now enjoy a cup of yogurt between classes at the new Chobani at the Heiber Café.

debate

Spanish Showdown 9 Madison County’s Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE) program has expanded its services to provide 24/7 care, offering students and county residents more access.

10 Math professor Will Cipolli received a grant to study “how radicalization became the dominant framework for understanding terrorism.”

11 In July, Colgate unveiled a redesigned website at colgate.edu.

12 Professor DeWitt Godfrey spent the summer building three new sculptures at the Paul J. Schupf Studio Arts Center with Jesse Allen ’19 and other colleagues. He’ll install the pieces at parks next year.

13 Michèle Alexandre ’96 became the first African American dean of Stetson University College of Law in June.

T

hey had 15 minutes.

The slide posed a question about quantitative expansion — whether a government should have the ability to purchase financial assets to inject liquidity into the economy during periods of low inflation. For two noneconomics majors, debating the complex topic was a daunting prospect. But by the time their 15-minute practice period was up, Camila Napuri ’21 and Diana Flores ’20 were ready.

Napuri and Flores were two of the five members of the Spanish Language Debate Society who jetted to Lima, Peru, July 15–23, to compete in the World Universities Debating Championship in Spanish.

Accompanied by Vice President and Dean of the College Paul McLoughlin II, the group traveled the 3,700 miles south to face off with other schools in British Parliamentary–style debates.

The two women placed second in the English as a Second Language category. One of the rounds, about quantitative expansion, was a challenge for the students, who are double majoring in biology/Spanish and history/peace and conflict studies, respectively. But Napuri says Colgate’s liberal arts curriculum, especially her core courses, helped the pair discuss

12 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

topics on which they weren’t well versed. For example, themes and terminology taught in Challenges of Modernity helped her form and articulate her arguments.

Arturo Longoria ’21, who critiqued arguments as latigo, or whip, during the competition, agrees. “I just started thinking about classes I took from the core: Challenges of Modernity, Legacies of the Ancient World, statistics, and everything came together,” he says.

Neither Napuri nor Longoria had debate experience before joining the society, organized six years ago as a way for students to practice Spanish while honing critical-thinking skills. But through reading Latin American and Spanish newspapers and engaging in practice debates with veteran members, they rose in the ranks, becoming captains for the championship.

Both Longoria and Napuri grew up in Spanish-speaking homes, so when they arrived on a predominantly English-speaking campus, they were homesick for that part of their cultural identity. They found out about the society through the Office of Undergraduate Studies, and since joining, they’ve formed a close-knit community with other Spanish speakers. While many members also grew up speaking Spanish, several joined to practice for their Spanish courses.

“It’s about Spanish, but it’s also about coming together and celebrating our Latin American culture,” Napuri says.

— Rebecca Docter

syllabus Autumn first-year seminars (FSEMS), to name a few: Natural Disasters: Science, Media, and Movies Professor Aubreya Adams, geology How accurately do disaster movies portray real natural disasters? This course introduces the science behind these occurrences in addition to examining how the media and film portray them.

Archaeology of Death and Burial Professor Kristin De Lucia, anthropology Studying the dead informs how we perceive the living; the human body holds clues to how social identity, political change, colonialism, social inequality, warfare, and other social processes affected past generations.

Students examine death and burial practices, learning how they inform archaeological research.

Emerging Technologies: The Science and Potential Implications of Nanotechnology Professor Rick Geier, Warren ’43 and Lillian Anderson Chair in chemistry The implications of nanotechnology are vast: from hopes of repairing a body without surgery to fears of irreversible poisoning of the planet. Students critically examine scientific and sensationalist visions of nanotechnology while learning about the process of science.

SCENE

football

Support

Opening Day

Bequest Boosts Soccer

C

mark diorio

M

acDonell “Don” Roehm Jr. ’61 earned AllAmerican and All-State honors for his skill as a Colgate soccer fullback. His passion for supporting Colgate athletics off the field as well was enshrined in a $4 million endowment bequest that he and his wife, Nedra, established during his 50th Reunion in 2011. With Roehm’s passing last April, his intention has been realized — to the benefit of the University’s student-athletes.

“Don was a true gentleman and Colgate soccer legend,” says Erik Ronning ’97, John W. Beyer head coach of men’s soccer. “He embodied all of the values we hold so dear.”

In the immediate term, income from the Roehm endowment will be used to transform a pair of part-time assistant soccer coaching positions — one each for men’s and women’s soccer — into fulltime, permanent employment.

“The endowment will create continuity within the program, leading to a culture of consistent success on and off the field,” Ronning says. “It will allow our coaching staff to consistently attract the highest caliber student-athletes and develop our players to reach their maximum potential.”

“Our ability as a staff to work as a cohesive unit, with the security of full-time employment, has just been raised to a higher level,” adds Kathy Brawn, head coach of women’s soccer.

A member of Maroon Key and Konosioni, Roehm was an active player in campus life during his time on the Hill. As an alumnus and Hall of Honor inductee, he was a constant source of support for the University and its student-athletes.

— Mark Walden

PROFILE

The Defender Meet #51: Linebacker, political science major, summer researcher

T

he unofficial motto of Colgate’s football team is “attitude and effort” — a perspective Andrew Jaworski ’21 has emulated in other aspects of his life. On the field, the 230-pound, 6-foot-1inch linebacker fights against a wave of 300-pound offensive linemen, providing extra protection for the goal line. In the classroom, the political science major puts his head down and fights through long study sessions, each achievement a stride toward a law career. And this past summer, he showed up to local government offices to fight against climate change through a research project with Colgate’s Upstate Institute. See what makes the scholar-athlete run: Writing resolutions for the Village and Town of Hamilton to become a greener place is how Jaworski spent his summer. The impetus of his project was to tick off boxes on the checklist that helps Hamilton attain its Climate Smart Communities Certification.

A sampling of his resolutions includes: “Promotion of Shaded Areas in Public Spaces” and “Recycle Bins in Village Buildings.” He also collected data on aspects like the number of LED street lights compared to non-LED ones, focusing on how each affects electricity bills. “Anything we can do to make the communities smarter and safer in terms of climate control is beneficial,” Jaworski says.

After researching ways to make Hamilton sustainable, he spent his evenings in Huntington Gymnasium preparing for the season.

It’s the first fall during which he’ll have a chance at game time — something he’s been working toward since committing to Colgate.

“He’s one of our more physical players and someone who really showed that we can trust him in a game,” Coach Dan Hunt said.

Jaworski wanted to explore different avenues in his political science major, so he chose his research project to see how governments operate. His favorite class so far? Politics and Moral Vision with Professor Barry Shain. “It was one of my toughest classes, but I learned a lot in terms of understanding politics and government today. It also helped me decide my major,” Jaworski says. Last semester, he also took the course Congress with political science professor Michael Hayes, in which he studied the history and structure of the legislative body.

— Rebecca Docter

olgate kicked off the 150th anniversary season of college football with its opening game against Villanova at the end of August. The team is wearing the CFB150 decal on their helmets this year in recognition of the anniversary.

With four new starters on offense and six on defense, the Raiders didn’t find their footing until the third quarter.

The strength of the Wildcats’ performance was too much to overcome, and the Raiders lost 34–14.

“But the good thing is a lot of kids got a lot of experience, which is ultimately the first goal for a team like this — get them on the field and get them playing, and hopefully we improve,” Head Coach Dan Hunt said afterward.

The crowd inside Crown Field at Andy Kerr Stadium reached 4,519 attendees. That day, Colgate also unveiled its new football videoboard, which measures 50 feet wide by 30 feet tall (almost five times larger than the previous board).

Golf

It’s a First

A

t the Cornell Invitational in mid-September, Ryan Skae ’20 fired the first 66 in program history.

“I was able to put the ball in the right places and made a few putts. I’m happy my putter was working today,” Skae said. “I didn’t know about the record.

That’s awesome.”

Beforehand, Skae had posted a 4-under round three times in his career, including his firstyear season at the 2016 Cornell Invitational. The New Jersey senior has two rounds of par or better this season and 25 for his career to extend the Colgate record.

— John Painter

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 13

SCENE

The Third-century plan faculty

Additional Support for Pre-Tenure Faculty

C

14 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

students

No-Loan Initiative

I

n a continued effort to provide competitive financial support and lessen student debt, Colgate is eliminating federal loans from financial aid offers for all current and incoming students with a total family income of up to $125,000, starting in the fall of 2020.

This expanded aid offering, recently approved by the Board of Trustees, means Colgate will continue to meet 100% of all admitted students’ demonstrated need, but loans will no longer be the responsibility of those who meet these criteria.

Students and families will still have the flexibility to take out their own loans.

An estimated 50% of all students receiving financial aid will benefit from this new initiative. Currently, 46% of Colgate students receive financial aid from the University. Funding for this new effort will initially come from the University’s operating budget, but plans are in place for the program to be fully supported by the endowment and the Colgate Fund through fundraising.

“Colgate must continue to attract the most qualified students from around the world, and this new financial-support initiative will help to ensure our classrooms are filled with the brightest minds from all economic backgrounds,” President Brian W. Casey says.

The average annual federal loan for students receiving financial aid at Colgate is approximately $2,200, and the average Colgate aid package for current students is about $53,000 a year. Colgate students already graduate with one of the nation’s lowest average levels of indebtedness. The average debt for students who graduated in the Class of 2019 was $15,305. The national average is about $30,000.

“We have always taken great pride in the generous financial aid offerings at Colgate, and this initiative goes even further to ensure that students from families with modest incomes can be considered to receive an even greater level of support while they pursue Colgate’s superb educational opportunities,” says Vice President for Admission and Financial Aid Gary Ross.

— Daniel DeVries

mark diorio

olgate is announcing a series of enhancements to faculty hiring packages — developed by Provost and Dean of the Faculty Tracey E. Hucks ’87, MA’90, four division directors, three associate deans, and the vice president for athletics.

In the year following successful passage of their third-year review, faculty will now receive two semesters of leave at full pay.

Formerly, full pay was available for only one semester, and those wishing to take a year of leave received just 50% of their salary.

Meanwhile, start-up packages will be enhanced for new faculty hires, providing more resources for items and activities that are crucial for a successful launch of a scholarly career at Colgate, such as research travel, lab equipment, library resources, and other supplies.

“The appointment of a tenured faculty member is a decadeslong commitment, both for the University and for the professor,” Hucks says. “With these new benefits, we acknowledge the importance of the relationship that we seek to establish as well as recognize the significance of the demands that are placed on scholars who teach at the highest tier.”

These enhancements augment the existing perquisites offered to new faculty — which include access to twice the amount of discretionary funding for teaching and research available to senior faculty as well as a reduced course load and mentorship opportunities for pre-tenure faculty preparing to teach in the University’s signature Liberal Arts Core Curriculum.

The pre-tenure faculty mentorship program is a highly successful way of bringing new faculty into the Colgate tradition of faculty, student, and alumni engagement with the core. Course offerings and readings within the core are updated regularly to keep pace with the development of human understanding, but the core’s underlying structure dates back nearly a century, uniting alumni across generations. Pre-tenure professors in the mentorship program partner with a veteran core professor and attend their mentor’s class, preparing for each session by completing readings, just as students do. They meet regularly with their mentors to discuss both class content and pedagogy.

When they, in turn, teach their first core course, they are observed in the classroom by their mentors.

“The core mentoring program has helped our faculty have better outcomes in the classroom from the very first time they teach in the core,” says Padma Kaimal, Batza Professor of art and art history; chair, Department of Art and Art History. “Colgate’s version of the core is so ambitious and so particular to this institution, there is no reason to think anyone would comprehend it until they had a chance to watch it in operation.”

“We are in the business of talent, and we are only as good as the people we attract,” President Brian W. Casey said when introducing The Third-Century Plan. “We have to be able to say to new faculty, ‘Come here and you will have a wonderful, lengthy, well-supported scholarly life,’ because the greatest scholars here teach well.”

— Mark Walden

SCENE

enrichment

Investments in Student Health Services and Sports Medicine

C

brad rempel

hanges to Student Health Services this academic year will increase clinical care availability on campus while also bolstering sportsmedicine support for Division I athletes, student club teams, and intramurals.

Student Health Services Director Dr. Merrill Miller will add to her staff the expertise of two new physicians, in addition to a clinical practice manager and a new medical office assistant. Student Health Services will also increase clinical availability by providing additional summer coverage and weekday walk-in hours.

As part of this investment, a newly established agreement with Upstate Medical University will result in the creation of a fellowship program for two sports-medicine residents to provide added care and training for Colgate’s 25 Division I athletics programs and its many club and intramural sports.

— Daniel DeVries

Digital Storytelling

Seeing the Whole Picture

I

t is a three-day journey from Hamilton, N.Y., to Teriberka, Russia, on the Barents Sea. Jessica Graybill, associate professor of geography and Russian and Eurasian studies, made the trek in July with Yang Zhang ’21 and Isobel Hooker ’21.

Their goal: to create a website that allows viewers to navigate Teriberka (pop. 700) via 360° images, explore its history, and holistically understand the uniquely situated town.

“Digital storytelling is being able to pull together a short, succinct story about a place, phenomenon, or person that can help explain something important in an academically informed, rigorous way,” Graybill explains.

In preparation, Zhang and Hooker spent five weeks at Colgate working over the summer with Sarah Kunze, instructional designer for innovative media in the IT department. They learned how to operate a 360-degree camera and display information online.

Zhang is a Russian and

Eurasian studies and political science double major, who was interested in learning about the role of government structure in Teriberka’s sociocultural norms. Hooker, a Russian and Eurasian studies major with art and political science double minors, wanted to further her understanding of remote Russia.

For her part, Graybill has studied the Russian Arctic for years and wanted to help her students create a digital story for this isolated town.

Teriberka now receives thousands of tourists each summer as the only town on Russia’s arctic coastline to have demilitarized to accommodate offshore oil and gas extraction. The resulting infrastructure development has changed the town’s human and environmental landscapes.

Despite sanctions that put a hold on oil development in 2012, the town has remained open and locals have been forced to adapt.

“The people are really struggling to understand the influx of tourism into this formerly closed space,” Graybill says. “They’re struggling to understand it, struggling to want it, and struggling with what to do with all the garbage that accumulates from it.”

Graybill, Zhang, and Hooker joined the global tourists and Russians who flocked to Teriberka to view the northern lights and partake in the fifth annual Arctic Festival. The trio lived off of deepfrozen reindeer, moss chips, and food from the town’s singular restaurant. They attended guided tours, spoke with locals, and took many pictures.

The website — colgate. edu/teriberka — takes viewers through the decaying village, with rotting boats along the shoreline. Voiceover narration elaborates on the livelihoods of the inhabitants and the new role of tourism. Viewers can digitally move through the space, stopping to explore bubbles filled with additional photos or informational blurbs.

“People might naturally explore in different orders and combinations and could potentially see all the same things and walk away with different interpretations of the story they heard,” Hooker says.

For Zhang, the research allowed her to see the adaptability of human life.

“Human geography [allows you] to see how these types of small towns and people are shaped by the infrastructure available to them.” — Lauren Hutton ’21

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 15

Discover

health

Going With Her Gut Robin Flannery ’02 is taking a closer look at the benefits of probiotics for babies.

or Robin (Pedersen) Flannery ’02, the term “gut check” has taken on a whole new meaning in her biomedical science career.

As director, clinical development and operations for Evolve Biosystems, Flannery is on the leading edge of a nascent field: the study of the infant gut microbiome and how its bacterial composition affects a child’s overall health.

She organizes and executes Evolve’s clinical trials that look at how the bacterium B. infantis — a species that uniquely consumes indigestible sugars in breast milk — can

F

16 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

enable babies to better utilize nutrients and, it’s theorized, strengthen their immune systems.

“Infants who do not have B. infantis in their gut microbiome will have a higher gut pH, which allows pathogenic (disease-causing) bacteria to thrive,” Flannery explains.

“These pathogenic bacteria, along with the disappearance of B. infantis, are linked to health issues such as diabetes, asthma, eczema, allergies, and obesity, all of which have been on the rise in our population.”

The gut microbiome also interacts significantly with the immune system. If

the wrong bacteria are involved in those interactions early in life, it can lead to aberrant immune system development and autoimmune disorders.

If a baby is delivered by cesarean section, fed formula, or prescribed antibiotics, they are less likely to have B. infantis in their gut microbiome. “We’re working to develop probiotic products to establish, restore, and maintain the infant gut to what nature intended,” Flannery says.

With funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she is coordinating a trial in Bangladesh that provides a B. infantis supplement in powder form to 75 malnourished infants. “They have a very different gut microbiome than healthy, age-matched controls,” she says. “We hypothesize that, by supplementing them with B. infantis and providing the proper nutrients, the infants will grow better and have improved health outcomes.”

In partnership with King’s College in London, Flannery has launched a trial of the powdered supplement for cesareandelivered infants that examines how their immune systems develop compared to babies given a placebo. And in Florida, she’s running a study of an oil-based supplement for preterm infants in one of the nation’s largest neonatal intensive care units.

It was after a career gut check that Flannery pivoted into clinical trial development. She had spent five years conducting traditional laboratory “bench science” — such as DNA extraction and cell-based assays — for Boston-area companies ranging from a small start-up to pharmaceutical giant Novartis. But, “I felt too far removed from the translation of that exciting science to patients,” she says.

Flannery honed her clinical trial development skills at Osiris Therapeutics, where she was on the clinical team that developed the world’s first FDA-approved stem-cell drug. The experience left no doubt that Flannery had found the “Goldilocks niche” that best matched her skills and interests. “Clinical trial work is so multifaceted,” she says. “I work with regulatory agencies. I coordinate the teams manufacturing the product. I’m responsible for all of the required documentation. I have to be organized for everything that’s happening at once.”

Since joining Evolve in 2016, Flannery acknowledges that her daily conversations have taken a turn she didn’t envision. “I never thought I’d spend so much time talking about poop and breast milk,” she jokes. “But being in this position, and doing this work, is really where I’ve always wanted to be.” ● — Kristin Baird Rattini Illustration by Rosie Scott

findings

The Science of Slumber Colgate’s Child Sleep and Physiology Lab tudent and faculty scientists are searching for ways to improve one of the most important elements of early childhood development — sleep.

Assistant Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences Lauren Philbrook and her student researchers Karen Aguilar ’20, of Dallas, Texas, and Kaila Daza ’21, of Easton, Pa., worked throughout the summer to conduct a number of tests with children, ages 3-5, in the Colgate Child Sleep and Physiology Lab. “The early years are critical because there is so much happening at that level of brain development,” Philbrook says.

“They’re constantly learning, so being able to consolidate that in their brains while they sleep is particularly important.”

Child participants in the study wore a device called an ActiGraph, which is similar to a Fitbit, for seven nights to track their sleep patterns. Parents filled out a lengthy questionnaire to gauge a host of potential environmental stressors ranging from neighborhood noise levels to family financial difficulties. For three days of the study,

S

parents also collected saliva samples from their children for the researchers to measure levels of cortisol, a stress hormone that can impact sleep patterns.

“We’re looking to see how cortisol can be interfering with sleep,” Philbrook says.

“If there is more stress during the day, the child’s level of cortisol may not come down at bedtime, making it more difficult to go to sleep.”

In addition, parents kept detailed logs of the times their children went to bed and woke up, and noted if their children took any medications, which could impact the sleep data. Parents also videotaped a typical bedtime routine with their children. Lastly, each child in the study participated in cognitive tests on an iPad in the sleep lab.

So far, 31 children have participated in the study, and Philbrook will continue the project into the spring semester.

Preliminary analysis of the data suggests that the social and financial resources associated with living in safer and more cohesive neighborhoods and having less family economic stress are linked to more structured bedtimes and better sleep patterns among children.

“Some research is purely academic for a highly educated audience, and some research is more based in practical use for any typical person reading it,” Daza says.

“Our research draws on both of these ideas, because while it is academic, we hope the knowledge will be useful and applicable for parents to create or modify bedtime routines for their children.” ● — Daniel DeVries

students

Real-World Research A cross section of summer projects

1

Molecular biology major Rebecca Gowen ’19 studied seasonal affective disorder (SAD), specifically how chronic levels of cortisol can be a biological marker of SAD. The study’s participants included two populations at high risk for SAD in upstate New York: a Karen population that relocated from Myanmar to Utica and a local population in Hamilton, primarily of Caucasian-European descent.

2

Chris Burke ’21 focused on the intersection of climate change and Western security.

His research looked at melting sea ice in the Arctic and the resulting security dilemmas — military buildup, resource competition, and contested shipping lanes. Burke interviewed military leaders and scholars of Arctic security.

3

Neuroscience major Tali Filstein ’21 conducted research on early biological and behavioral markers of autism.

The Infant Screening Project at Boston Children’s Hospital is trying to find markers of autism that can be used to diagnose children at a younger age.

Filstein assisted with the testing of the subjects.

andrew daddio

Other projects included: →→ Caio Rodrigues Faria Brighenti ’20, from São Paulo, Brazil, developed a computer model to detect the textual properties of fake news.

Professor Lauren Philbrook (right)

→→ Mayzie Potton ’22, from Kenai, Alaska, led a storytelling workshop for students in Alaska and southern Africa.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 17

DISCOVER

Big Brain Theory Microsoft-funded research envisions computer chips that behave like human neurons.

very year, consumers ask their computers to do more work at greater speeds, and processing power has grown to meet the demand. Recently, however, the engineering feats that made it all possible are becoming prohibitively expensive for computer makers.

Neuromorphic computing offers one possible way forward for computer hardware manufacturers in search of low-cost, highspeed alternatives to traditional silicon-based

E

Segall in his lab

18 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

processors. Physics professor Ken Segall is embarking upon collaborative research with Microsoft to progress this new approach.

Silicon is the semiconductor that forms the basis of today’s computer circuits, performing calculations like weather forecasts, traffic models, or financial transactions. The electrons that drive these calculations must be powered across the transistors, which sit on silicon chips. Along the way, they bump into surfaces and each

Mark diorio

physics

other, slowing their speed and causing them to bleed energy in the form of heat.

“Because there are so many transistors on these chips and they generate heat, they’re taking more and more power to operate,” Segall says. “And if you want to solve big problems, you need a lot of them.”

For example, the Summit supercomputer, currently the world’s fastest supercomputer, uses more than 73.7 trillion transistors, requiring 4,000 gallons of water per minute for cooling and drawing 13 megawatts — or enough electricity to power nearly 10,000 homes at one time. “This is completely unsustainable,” Segall states.

While the brain has been likened to a computer, Segall’s neuromorphic approach flips the metaphor. It anticipates dynamic, energy-efficient computer hardware that is built like a brain.

Organic brains don’t separate memory and processing functions, so humans can identify faces and navigate through space at

DISCOVER high speed. We learn as we go, prioritizing inputs, growing intellectually stronger where necessary, and letting unimportant information fall away. All of this happens thanks to the rapid transit of electrons along synapses, connecting an estimated 100 billion neurons.

“There is now a way to think about computing from the point of view of: Let’s make something at the hardware level where the connections themselves can change, and we can train a computer to do a different kind of task,” Segall explains.

“That’s a very different picture from [the way machines operate] now, where it is all in the software and not in the hardware itself.”

With a start-up grant from Colgate’s Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute, Segall partnered with physics professor Patrick Crotty and Daniel Schult, Charles G. Hetherington Professor of mathematics, to model artificial neurons in superconducting metals. They began by establishing the mathematics behind the biology, and then, during the following two years, used their data to design a superconducting niobium chip bearing two artificial neurons.

Following experimentation and prototyping, Segall’s team sent electrons through the chip and produced a graph of its firing frequency. It showed behavior similar to that of biological neurons perfectly, dissipating almost zero power. Just as important , the chip rendered its graph in only 15 minutes, compared to the original model, which took two days to complete on a standard computer.

“There was a biological prediction,” Segall says. “We saw the same behavior in our circuit, at almost 100,000 times faster than the biology.”

Documenting the success achieved in Segall’s lab, he and his colleagues copublished an article in the March 2017 edition of the journal Physical Review. That paper attracted Microsoft’s support for a next phase of exploration. As Professor David Reilly, Microsoft scientific director of Microsoft Quantum Lab Sydney, explains, “There is a prospect for the application of neuromorphic computing to quantum — ultra low power neuromorphic circuits may be leverageable for controlling quantum devices at scale.”

Segall explains, “In these early stages, we are trying to make rudimentary components, to test and see if they are behaving as they should. Once we have one, we can scale — that’s important.” ● — Mark Walden

Professor Ken Segall specializes in electronics, solid state physics, nonlinear dynamics, superconductivity, and mechanics.

PROFESSOR KLUGHERZ’S FALL COURSES:

ASK A PROFESSOR

How does Examines the complex chamber music geographic, historic, social, racial, literary, study enhance political, and artistic fabric of Cuba. living and learning?

Chamber

Cuba

Music I and II

The Colgate Chamber Players (strings, pianists, winds) perform a diverse chamber music repertoire. →

Chamber music, often called “the music of friends,” is written for two to 12 players, one performer per part, and without a conductor. Chamber musicians learn when to lead and when to follow, along with the flexibility to quickly alternate these roles in performance. Each member is a soloist, but must also appreciate compromise and collaboration while developing their own ideas.

The practice of chamber music draws upon a plethora of musical, strategic, and logistical challenges that require effective and quick solutions, as well as exploration of many options.

Keeping the intention and style of the composer in mind, chamber musicians learn to explore their imaginations in their musical interpretations. Players learn how to communicate

musical ideas, directions, and articulations nonverbally and soloistic in rehearsal/ performance, and how to quickly resolve creative and rehearsal process disagreements in order to produce a product in which everyone’s ideas are represented.

Passion for this collaborative and solistic musical genre unites creative performers who have entered such diverse professions as law, medicine, business, and computer science. Through love of music and the joys of this intimate musical activity, chamber musicians of differing musical, religious, socioeconomic, and political views often form lifelong bonds and friendships.

Laura Klugherz is a professor of music and director of chamber music at Colgate. Additionally, she is a professor of Africana and Latin American studies and coordinator of Latin American studies. An active concert soloist, she specializes in somatic education for musicians and other performing artists, contemporary violin-viola repertoire of Spain and Latin America, and compositions of 19th- and 20th-century Spain.

Do you have a big-picture question for a faculty member? Write to us at: magazine@colgate.edu.

Professor Laura Klugherz (center)

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 19

20 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

SHE’S THE ONE

These alumnae are blazing trails.

By Aleta Mayne

SHE’S WORKED HER WAY UP THE LADDER

J

eanine “Neen” Nicholson ’86 grew up across the street from a fire station in Pelham, N.Y. Both her father and grandfather were volunteer firefighters. But, as a girl, she never thought fighting fires was an option for herself.

Fast forward to 1991, Nicholson was living in San Francisco, “not feeling particularly fulfilled,” she says. While attending the gay pride parade, a friend handed her an interest card for the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD).

“Women can do this?” Nicholson asked with excitement.

“If you can carry heavy things, you’ll be fine,” the friend responded.

Photo by Bryan Meltz

Beyond the novelty factor, the thought of joining the fire department appealed to Nicholson’s desire to serve. “It feeds me,” she says.

Although it was 1994, women had been part of the department for only a few years. “There weren’t very many of us,” she notes, estimating that there were 50 women out of 1,500 firefighters. “We didn’t have separate bathrooms, and we didn’t have a separate changing room in most places.”

Today, as the recently appointed fire chief of San Francisco, Nicholson has her own personal bathroom.

This is how far she’s come: For her first eight years with the SFFD, Nicholson was a firefighter with different companies around the city and then became certified as a firefighter paramedic, splitting her time between the fire engine and the ambulance. She was promoted to lieutenant in 2008, captain in 2012, and then to battalion chief in 2017.

Diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer in 2012, Nicholson had to undergo a Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 21

double mastectomy and 16 rounds of chemotherapy. She was cleared to return to full duty 20 months later, but not before passing the physical agility test. Dressed in full gear, including a bulky air tank, Nicholson blasted through the course: swinging an ax, doing pull-ups, throwing a ladder, hauling a hose, and dragging a dummy.

At 49 years old, she broke the agility test record for the best time by a female firefighter: 8 minutes, 4 seconds. A coworker witnessing the feat commented, “That was like a 25-year-old dude doing it.”

Nicholson remembers, “I was determined to get back to my job.”

At the end of 2017, the chief of the department selected her to be deputy chief of administration (the No. 3). As such, she oversaw training, homeland security, investigative services, human resources, and support services. “I got a really good view of what it’s like to run the department,” Nicholson says. Good thing, because she’d need it sooner than anticipated.

Out of 30 candidates, Nicholson was selected by Mayor London Breed to be the fire chief in May. “This woman has done something that I’m not certain has been replicated by any other member of the department,” Breed said during the swearing-in ceremony. “She [has] worked in every corner of the department all over the city and county of San Francisco… Working in so many capacities, from suppression to administration, she knows the fabric of this organization.”

Another priority is the budget, through which she’s requested a new health, wellness, and safety division for firefighters — who experience higher rates of cancer, PTSD, alcoholism, and suicide. She has already spearheaded educational and prevention initiatives, such as on-scene decontamination stations to remove toxic chemicals. “It used to be a badge of honor if you had soot on your face and your coat was filthy,” she recalls. “We would just walk back into the firehouse, take off our coats, and sit at the table to have a meal. So, we’ve had to institute some new practices.”

Being a public figure and a role model is part of the fire chief’s job. As San Francisco’s first openly gay fire chief, Nicholson takes that seriously. “I never had role models of any gay people when I was a kid. It was unheard of. So, I think it is really important for young people to have people with whom they can identify, so they can dream big.”

At this year’s San Francisco Gay Pride Festival, the SFFD participated, as it does in many of the city’s parades. As Nicholson marched past the crowds, she says, “It was really clear how proud people were of having the first LGBTQ chief. That was really touching to me.”

First job: “Working in the kitchen at a Cape Cod family seafood restaurant. I did everything: washed dishes; made pies, salads, coleslaw.”

Nicholson quickly established and outlined her priorities as fire chief. At the top of the list are homelessness and drug use, both of which are on the rise in San Francisco.

Of all calls to the SFFD, 80% are medical, and 40% of those are persons with an unknown address. “There are a lot more behavioral-health and opioid issues than ever before,” Nicholson recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We definitely have a crisis on our hands.”

Another first: In the mid-’70s, she wanted to sign up for Little League but was told “no girls allowed.” Nicholson’s dad went to bat for her, she got on the team, and she played third base “because I was the only one who could reach first base with a throw.”

Disaster planning and preparedness are also significant. “It’s not if an earthquake is going to hit, it’s when,” Nicholson says.

“We’re due.” At press time, officials were proposing $153.3 million for emergency water system improvements to reach all areas of the city.

Her cat: Among Nicholson’s several rescue animals is her gray feline friend, Humo, which means smoke in Spanish.

22 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

On being a firefighter: “I have an affinity for bringing calm to chaos.”

At Colgate: Majored in sociology and anthropology; played ice hockey and rugby

Advice for other women who want to be firefighters: “Don’t doubt yourself. Be prepared physically, psychologically, and mentally.”

SHE’S THE BRAINS BEHIND LIFE-CHANGING RESEARCH

M

ichela Gallagher ’69 has found a treatment that may slow or even stop the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. As U.S. doctors diagnose a new case every 65 seconds, she’s racing against time.

Science, however, takes time, Gallagher emphasizes. She’s dedicated the last 20+ years to this research as a professor of psychological and brain sciences and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University and its school of medicine. “I’m a scientist; I know how long it takes to get things done,” she says.

Gallagher didn’t set out to become a scientist. She was a fine arts major who transferred to Colgate from University College London for her senior year.

Her fascination with visual art led to an exploration of the relationship between the visual system and the brain. “I was really interested in the fact that everything you see is going on in your brain,” she explains. So, after graduation, Gallagher pursued a PhD in neuroscience at the University of Vermont.

“And then I got completely hooked on the memory system because it’s just amazing.”

She initially focused on episodic memory — how we remember daily experiences and the events of our life. Because a mild loss of episodic memory is a common condition as we get older, Gallagher began studying neurocognitive aging.

A surprising research finding in the early 2000s put into motion Gallagher’s pioneering work. She learned that the neurons that encode memories become overactive, not underactive, with aging.

“You would think that the brain is slowing down,” she says. Instead, “we found that particular neurons located in the memory system were firing more highly.” The overactivity creates memory interference because “the overactive neurons failed to encode new information.”

At the same time, researchers began to identify mild cognitive impairment (MCI) as the transitional phase between normal aging and Alzheimer’s. In patients diagnosed with MCI, they found, there is even more

pronounced overactivity in the memory system.

Gallagher began conducting studies with mice and identified a drug that reduced the overactivity. The drug, called AGB101, is an unusual antiepileptic prescribed as an adjunctive treatment with certain forms of epilepsy.

In 2008, Gallagher received a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study the effects of AGB101 on humans. In the trials, participants with MCI took the drug at onetenth the dose that doctors usually prescribe to people with epilepsy. “It was safe; there were no adverse effects,” she says.

Her team then used functional magnetic resonance imaging to scan study participants while they were performing memory tasks. While effectively reducing the hyperactivity, the medication also helped participants improve performance on memory tasks. “So it was a pretty compelling test of the hypothesis about the functional significance of overactivity,” Gallagher says. Since then, scientific evidence has shown that heightened neural activity drives the spread of Alzheimer pathology across connected neurons initially localized in the episodic memory system.

Photo by Mike Morgan

She conducted and published the research at Johns Hopkins. To develop the patents, licenses, and clinical trials, she founded the company AgeneBio. Gallagher is now running a phase 3 clinical trial with 830 patients in the United States, Europe, and Canada through AgeneBio. In addition, she is running a substudy with 160 U.S. patients that’s looking at the protein called tau, which initially has a confined localization within the memory system but spreads over the protracted course of dementia. Tangles composed of tau can now be visualized by brain imaging methods, so the substudy can determine whether targeting neural overactivity limits the spread of tau. The NIH has given Gallagher a $20 million grant to visualize the location of tau in participants by using PET imaging.

The hope with these Alzheimer dementia prevention trials is that AGB101 proves to slow the progression of MCI. “If we can extend the amount of time it takes someone to get to the clinical stage of dementia by three years, the prevalence of patients with dementia decreases by 30 percent,” Gallagher explains.

She knows the toll dementia takes on patients and their families firsthand.

Gallagher’s mother died of Alzheimer’s in 2003. “It’s tough on everybody. It’s totally emotional, personal, and a big stressor to undergo that process,” Gallagher says.

Her research has the potential to change lives. “If what we’re doing works, we could intervene earlier if you had the right biomarker to potentially prevent Alzheimer’s altogether,” she adds. “That’s a dream and the vision for the longer term.”

One of the first two women to receive a BA from Colgate She is the first female graduate to earn a PhD, according to University records Awards: →→ The Melvin R. Goodes Prize for Alzheimer’s research →→ The Mika Salpeter Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Neuroscience First job: “I was an entrepreneur. I grew up riding horses, and my father said my sister and I could buy a horse if we paid for it. So we did everything in the world to raise enough money, like selling potholders and we ran a neighborhood newspaper. We were so committed, my father doubled our money and we got a horse.”

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 23

SHE’S REBUILDING TRUST ONE PATIENT AT A TIME

A

24 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

Dr. Dinee Simpson ’00 is the first female African American transplant surgeon in Illinois.

The multipronged program will also create interventions that focus on the top reasons why African Americans aren’t receiving transplants, such as obesity.

Simpson’s team just received a grant to talk with one of Chicago’s South Side communities about ways to combat obesity.

Simpson’s own experience with a surgeon led her to this field. When she was a junior at Colgate, Simpson — who was a healthy student-athlete on the track team — learned at an annual physical that she had two breast masses that needed to be removed. “It was the first and only surgery I’ve ever had,” says Simpson, who underwent the procedure in Utica, N.Y., where she grew up. “There was something profound about being unsure of what was going on.” But after discussing the diagnosis and possibilities with the surgeon, Simpson was relieved to know that the surgery would result in a definitive answer.

“That was really powerful to me,” she says.

The chemistry major, who was planning to earn her PhD, changed courses and entered a medical track.

Her practical personality thrives on logical solutions. As a resident trainee learning about surgical subspecialties, something clicked for Simpson during her first living donor kidney transplant. “When we restored the blood flow, the [new] kidney turned pink and started making urine right away. There is no better instant gratification than that. Even after doing several hundred transplants, it never gets old.” Simpson also specializes in liver transplants.

Later that same day, she was working in the evaluation clinic where patients find out if they are transplant candidates. All six

patients who visited the clinic that day were African American. “This was the first time I found out that kidney disease affected that population as profoundly as it does,” she says.

Simpson was shocked that she hadn’t learned this information previously in medical school. She also was surprised by the patients’ reactions to her. Although they were scared and skeptical of the circumstances, “just by me looking the way I looked, walking into their clinic room and introducing myself as part of the care team helped them tremendously,” she says.

Simpson remembers the patients crying, hugging her, and telling her “how good it was to see me.”

The experience sent Simpson on a literature search, uncovering information about the disadvantages African Americans have when it comes to kidney transplants. “It felt like a place I needed to be, and I thought I could make a big difference for a huge population that is affected by this disease,” she says.

Now a year and a half into her role at Northwestern, it’s clear that she made the right choice.

First job: Sales clerk at Kids ’R Us in New Hartford, N.Y. Recently received the SHEro Award from Distinctively Me, an organization that empowers adolescent girls.

Hardest parts of her job: 1. Being on the committee that decides who does and does not receive an organ transplant. 2. Balancing life as a surgeon, wife, and mother of two boys.

chicago tribune

frican Americans are almost four times more likely to suffer from kidney failure than Caucasians. They also have a higher risk of the top two causes of kidney disease: diabetes and high blood pressure.

At the same time, they are less likely to seek care because of their mistrust of the medical community, explains Dr. Dinee Simpson ’00 of Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. “That’s related to the dark history in our country where there’s been experimentation with African Americans — for example, the Tuskegee experiment,” she says.

As the first female African American transplant surgeon in the state of Illinois, Simpson is in a position to rebuild that broken trust and address this population’s health needs.

In addition to having a higher disease burden, African Americans’ lack of knowledge and access to care compound the problem, according to Simpson. “There are a lot of people who have kidney disease but never see a nephrologist or a kidney expert until they end up on dialysis,” she says. “This is a huge problem because when kidney disease is diagnosed early, it can be slowed.”

Implicit bias in the medical community is another issue. African Americans are less likely to be referred to a nephrologist, and many are not offered the option of transplant.

Simpson has looked at these disparities through the research side of her job, and her findings have supported the need for her brand-new Northwestern Medicine African American Transplant Access Program. The evolving program is designed to improve relationships with patients by setting up satellite clinics and sending medical professionals into the community for outreach.

“It’s a long process and not something we can do overnight,” Simpson says. “It will involve me and my group going into the community — rather than making them come to us — and having frank conversations, learning what their issues are, asking about their misgivings, and trying to address those.”

SHE’S THE MAYOR Nancy Baldwin ’78 is the first American to be elected mayor of the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, U.K.

Y

ou’ve lived in Richmond since 1985. How did you become mayor?

I ran as a local councilor, and all the councilors elect the mayor. So they got together and elected me.

I like a challenge.

In your career, you’ve held roles as banker, teacher, entrepreneur, and actor — is there a common thread?

Yes — communicating with people. And yes, I have done all those things. If I read it, I’d say, “she made that up,” but no. I’ve always needed an intellectual challenge.

I went to NYU for my MBA. I was chosen to study overseas at Manchester Business School (England), which is where I met

my husband. I ended up becoming a vice president of corporate real estate in London.

I enjoyed the customer contact, and there is a buzz to putting together a really good deal.

Then I made the ultimate career decision and became a mother.

When my son turned 2, things were on an even keel, so I asked myself, “What do I want to do?” I majored in German at Colgate and earned a master’s from University at Albany, SUNY. I love German, and there was a big demand for modern language teachers here in the U.K., so I became a teacher.

After my second son was born, I needed childcare, so I started a play group. Like a good little MBA, I took my clipboard to the busiest grocery in town to ask mothers with toddlers, “Would you like this kind of service? How much would you pay for it?”

People said, “Please start something.” I still run that group today.

Next I got accepted to law school, but a friend asked, “What do you really want to do?” I replied that I’d always wanted to be an actress but never had the guts. So I thought, “Let’s give it a go.” I ended up going to drama school (with Tom Hardy). Nearly 20 years later, I’m still acting. Because of my business experience, I am asked to go into corporations to simulate challenging business situations in order to teach staff how to cope. That led to me getting an MSc in business psychology and starting a personal coaching business, mostly to help young women in their career choices.

Why did you first get involved in politics?

The Brexit vote to leave the European Union made me really angry for about a year, so my kids suggested that I run for local politics. I can’t change the world, but at least I can do something about the little stuff. As a student of German literature, this [philosophy] all comes from Goethe’s Faust: It’s the small things in life that make it worthwhile.

What has your position as a local councilor entailed?

Mostly, I am the residents’ advocate.

However, I’m a liberal democrat, so I do a certain amount of party work, making people aware of our positions on various issues. The big issue is, of course, Brexit. The LibDems unapologetically think we should be remaining [in the EU].

How does your mayoral position differ from a U.S. mayor?

It’s a civic position and apolitical, so I represent all parties and all walks of life.

What does your weekly schedule typically look like?

I may start with breakfast with the Chamber of Commerce, talking about how to keep the High Street (Main Street in America) alive. I may go to a coffee morning at the almshouses [housing for the impoverished elderly]. Then I might visit a school and have afternoon tea at another project. We just had a week’s worth of festivities and talks celebrating the Thames, where I gave a prize to Sir David Attenborough.

Tell us about the two charities you selected for the mayoral appeal.

My charities include Home-Start, which supports and guides parents who are under stress (for various reasons, like mental health issues or unemployment) and have children under the age of 5. Children who come from an enriched environment do better in school, so this is all about early intervention. My other charity is the Otakar Kraus Music Trust, a local charity that provides music therapy to kids with additional needs. I wanted to do something with music because I’ve always played [she was a timpanist who played in the Colgate orchestra], and music can make all the difference.

First job: “A paper round subcontracted from my three older brothers when I was 10. I still say I was exploited.”

Term as mayor: 12 months, ending in May 2020 Mayoral garb: “I sometimes have to wear my tricorn hat, robe, and full regalia.”

The “chain of office” around her neck: “Every British mayor has a chain of office. Richmond’s particularly fine set of chains are from 1858. Every link represents a mayor from the past. They had to stop doing that in 1934 because it’s already two and half kilos of solid 18-karat gold. I have four different chains for different events. For example, I have a different chain for when I meet royalty because you don’t want to out-bling them.”

Stay tuned: We see you, Class of 1974 alumnae, and next fall, we’ll be celebrating the anniversary of your arrival as the first co-educational class. Email magazine@colgate.edu to tell us about female trailblazers from ’74.

In the winter issue, we’ll be covering the 25th anniversary of Colgate’s Center for Women’s Studies, which is being celebrated in November.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 25

26 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

Today, our alumni possess a deep understanding of the unique and special character of Colgate.

Tomorrow, the world will.

Colgate kicks off its 201st year with a bold, long-term plan.

ESSENTIALLY COLGATE

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 27

→

As Colgate University settles into the first year of its third century, President Brian W. Casey — an expert in the history of American higher education — is taking his job seriously.

Colgate’s 17th chief executive is spending a great deal of time talking about Colgate’s Third-Century Plan, which he announced publicly during the Bicentennial Address at the All-Class Reunion in May. He brought it to the full staff during its August meeting, to the Student Government Association when it convened after Arrival Day, to parents and family members during Family Weekend, and to residents of Hamilton, N.Y., on Colgate Day, Sept. 13. This academic year, he is on tour, discussing the plan with Colgate community members across America and in countries around the world.

The Third-Century Plan is a long-term road map for Colgate. It sets forth a series of initiatives that focuses the institution on its fundamentals, strengthening them relentlessly, seeking to make Colgate the strongest possible version of itself. It is a plan that calls on Colgate to reinforce the foundations that make any college or university great: 1) attracting and supporting outstanding students, faculty, and staff; 2) strengthening the University’s academic enterprise; 3) enriching the student experience; and 4) improving the campus. It is a plan to make Colgate one of the nation’s

President Brian W. Casey

28 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

small handful of truly outstanding colleges and universities.

“Great institutions know what they are, and then seek to enhance their fundamental characteristics. The Third-Century Plan seeks, first, to articulate the distinctive features of Colgate, and then sets forth ways to make all these features stronger,” Casey says. “The plan does not seek to make Colgate more like Williams or Bowdoin, Dartmouth or Duke (though we will compare ourselves to these great colleges and universities, and others), but to make it both distinctive and strong.

We will pursue this plan over a long period of time, while moving as quickly as possible on the first initiatives. Following this road map — which will require resources, resolve, and rigor — will result in a Colgate that is academically, reputationally, and financially stronger,” Casey concludes.

The full Third-Century Plan can be read at colgate.edu/thirdcenturyplan.

The 39-page document represents two years’ work logged by the president, the cabinet, dozens of campus committees, and the Board of Trustees. Recently, members of these groups took a moment to reflect on the effort to create a plan that all could support — to go through the pages of the plan and elaborate on the underlying hope, excitement, and ambition that will secure Colgate’s position as a leading American institution.

Colgate now seeks to pursue its mission at an even higher level, to establish the University, more firmly than today, as one of the small handful of truly outstanding colleges and universities in the nation and the world.

This Third-Century Plan is a long-term plan for that quest.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 3

Any audience listening to the president speak might be tempted to think that The Third-Century Plan sprung, fully written, from the third floor of James B. Colgate Hall.

But even as he walks his listeners logically from element to element, Casey is intent on keeping them from making this mistake. The reality is more complex, going back more than three years to the moment when the Board of Trustees hired him for the position of chief executive. Even then, the fiduciary body was laying the groundwork for action.

“When we hired President Casey, we knew that we wanted to evaluate the board structure. We spent about a year looking at best practices of boards, how they should operate, and what the proper role of the board should be,” says Board of Trustees Chair Michael J. Herling ’79, P’08,’09,’12.

“As the main pillars of The Third-Century Plan became apparent, we were ready to restructure the board to make it a better facilitator of decision making — to align the programmatic committees of the board with the foundational elements of the vision.”

Meanwhile, the president was going to many meetings. He and his cabinet members

I

Attracting Outstanding People

Michael Herling

spent 18 months shuttling between 23 faculty governance committees, six committees of the board, and the Alumni Council. Casey also revived and expanded a standing committee of the faculty, the Advisory and Planning Committee (APC), to serve as his campusbased working group to help draft the plan.

Together, this committee and administrators reviewed past research and reports and discussed priorities and best practices. They spoke of Colgate’s essentials and debated how they should be stewarded, how best to express them for maximum effect in the competitive higher education environment.

A draft plan emerged with the board and the APC, covering an extensive amount of territory — every inch of the University’s 575 acres and all of the programs that take place here.

Then, for the first time since 1969, Colgate’s president called a special meeting of the faculty to present the plan and to outline both board and APC discussions. The full board formally adopted the plan during its meetings on May 3–4, 2019; the Alumni Council endorsed the plan two weeks later.

And then came the moment to present the plan to all gathered alumni during the historic All-Class Reunion.

“I can’t speak to other plans that Colgate has had in the past,” Herling says. “But this was the result of incredibly thoughtful work

by President Casey and his team. It captures the essence of the institution.”

The board’s recent realignment around the plan’s emerging structure made it possible for the body to transition into the prioritization of resources and approve funding for a series of first initiatives.

Preparations and consultations had a further advantage: They allowed the institution and those who lead its seven divisions — admission, advancement, athletics, dean of the college, dean of the faculty, finance and administration, and communications — to take immediate action on those initiatives.

Truly talented students, a leading faculty, and professional staff are all required for Colgate to be among the finest colleges and universities in the nation.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 9

→

The nation’s attention is attuned to conversations around student debt. Colgate, for its part, has a proud, long-standing tradition of meeting the full financial need of every admitted student.

In spite of this history, Colgate still included some federal loans in certain financial aid packages. Often, these loans were in the packages of middle-income students — undergraduates from families with salaries too high be eligible for Pell Grants yet not wealthy enough to shoulder the full cost of a Colgate education. Other institutions were sweeping in and recruiting these well-qualified candidates by offering them financial aid packages that promised a debt-free commencement.

These were students Colgate admitted, students who belonged Tracey Hucks on our campus.

With the introduction of The Third-Century Plan, therefore, Colgate launched the NoLoan Initiative, the first major initiative of the plan. This step removes all federal loans from financial aid packages for students with family incomes below $125,000. “If the obligation of loans is one of the things keeping our students from coming here, then let’s remove it,” Casey says. “The University is incredibly fortunate — we are one of only two dozen institutions that have now moved into this position.” (See p. 14 for more on the No-Loan Initiative.)

Recruiting the most talented students, regardless of financial background, is one of the first steps in The Third-Century Plan’s Section I mandate. The recruitment of faculty is coequal. So the plan goes further, outlining the University’s intention to make itself the ideal home for the world’s most talented teacher-scholars.

“Colgate faculty shoulder a herculean responsibility of simultaneously teaching and researching at the institution’s expected level of excellence,” says Tracey E. Hucks ’87, MA’90, provost and dean of the faculty, and James A. Storing Professor of religion and Africana and Latin American studies.

“Maintaining a balanced commitment to both pursuits is challenging.”

The Third-Century Plan addresses those challenges, providing scholars with more time to complete their scholarship and engage in new ways of teaching.

Colgate, through this plan, seeks to have

faculty maintain a teaching load equal to the finest colleges in the nation — eventually reducing their annual five-courses-a-year burden to an elite-college level of four.

This might seem counterintuitive, given that faculty members are hired to teach. However, Hucks says, “Colgate’s best teachers and the best scholars value time as an essential pathway for excellence in their classrooms and in their disciplines.”

Reduced course loads will free up hours and days to devote Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 29

II

Strengthening the Academic Enterprise

Gretchen Burke

to course preparation, research, and student interactions — the kind that foster inspirational relationships between undergraduates and their mentors. It will also ensure that, at the moment Colgate is seeking to hire new teacher-scholars, it can say that its faculty will operate in conditions equal to the nation’s best universities. No longer will we lose faculty to Williams, Bowdoin, or Princeton because our support is not up to expected levels.

The Third-Century Plan acknowledges that the most inspirational professors might themselves need to be inspired to come to Hamilton. It calls on the institution not only to create more time for faculty to do their important work, but also more endowed professorships to recognize their success.

In this arena, Colgate is lagging behind its peers. “Fourteen percent of our faculty members hold endowed professorships; an average among our peers would be closer to 30%,” says Gretchen H. Burke ’81, P’11,’20, who chairs the board’s campaign committee.

“Every time you name an endowed professorship, it provides financial support for the institution, and it is prestigious for the professor. It lets candidates know that we support our faculty at the highest level.”

Recruitment is more important now than ever, with vacancies opening in the ranks each year as a generation of faculty members reach emeriti status. “We are at a point where many of those who were hired when women came to campus 50 years ago are retiring,” Burke says. “There are new professors coming to campus, the next teachers whom alumni will remember fondly, and that is why it is so important that we continue to attract the most brilliant candidates.”

For more details on the effort to recruit new faculty, see p. 14.

30 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

A fundamental foundation upon which Colgate’s stronger future rests will be the extent to which the University seeks to continuously strengthen the academic life of the University and nurture a culture in which intellectual rigor marks all of its endeavors.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 17

→

The Third-Century Plan was designed to make Colgate academically stronger than ever before, and the Robert Hung Ngai Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative illustrates the intention.

Olin Hall, the home of the University’s biology department and the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, was completed in 1971 and renovated in 1990.

Significant research is conducted in the facility, but the HVAC systems now require expansion and the roof needs to be replaced.

Crunching the numbers, administrators put the price tag at a $12 million minimum simply to bring the building up to needed operational levels. But the facility’s challenges brought opportunities. “As we

were looking at the plans to renovate Olin Hall, biology and psychology faculty in that building pointed out that they have been talking to each other, studying the brain and the mind, charisma, leadership, and the biological foundations of ethics,” Casey says. “Meanwhile, our language-acquisition researchers and our philosophers who study the mind suggested they would like to work with those folks, too.”

Within this aging building, new partnerships were yielding innovative projects and providing countless teaching moments between faculty and students.

“So, we said to ourselves, what if we transformed Olin Hall to provide a space for what could be the finest mind, brain, and behavior initiative in America?” Casey says.

Robert H.N. Ho ’56, H’11 responded to the idea with a gift of $15 million. The University will solicit funds and dedicate current budget resources to round out the necessary commitment, resulting not only in more satisfactory ventilation, but a completely renovated facility that will encourage the kinds of interdisciplinary opportunities that are the hallmarks of leading American colleges and universities.

“Our students couldn’t care less about 19th-century boundaries of intellectual life, and our faculty have long moved past these lines,” Casey says. “Students and faculty want to solve problems; they want to think about complex things.”

Complex thinking will take place down the Hill as well, once the University fulfills its intention to design a Middle Campus Plan for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation — a concept that emerged alongside Mind, Brain, and Behavior, thanks to the outstanding curricular and scholarly endeavors of Colgate’s faculty. “Both initiatives reflect a nexus for rich interdisciplinary collaborations and programs across campus and will provide students with access to cutting-edge facilities and robust avenues for research and intellectual creativity,” Hucks adds.

As envisioned, the middle campus project will take a series of buildings that were

designed independently — James C. Colgate Hall, Little Hall, Dana Arts Center, Persson Hall, and Case Library — and transform them into an intentional, cohesive new section of the campus. Within these buildings, some of which will be heavily renovated, the campus community will be able to study dance and computer science, entrepreneurship and painting, music, filmmaking, and art history. This will be done in complementary ways that amplify the means by which Colgate is already pursuing residential liberal arts education.

“Colgate has a deep tradition within disciplines like neuroscience, biology, computer science, and all aspects of the arts,” says Alumni Council President Christian B. Johnson ’02. “Being able to merge these disciplines geographically and intellectually is critical to the education of students as they prepare to become future leaders. Colgate has identified how these courses of studies, in combination, can make the institution stand out among its peers.”

Middle campus will also address the straightforward, long-standing need for spaces that enable students to express themselves. “Instead of doing what most institutions have done — just build a big performing arts facility — we are going to develop something more innovative and useful: a middle campus that could be animated 24 hours a day with people doing creative things,” Burke says.

III Enriching the Student Experience

Colgate must overtly and explicitly seek to create a deep, clear, and compelling campus culture — nurtured and expressed through its residential programs, its athletics program and other student activities, its ceremonies and traditions, and through the overall experience of the campus.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 27

→

Christian Johnson

“You can learn in a classroom from the four classes you take every semester, but if Colgate does its work well, you should be learning where you live,” says Vice President and Dean of the College Paul J. McLoughlin II. It’s an ambitious goal. Students spend approximately 20,000 hours outside the classroom during their undergraduate years.

McLoughlin and his staff are working with partners across campus to fill those moments with meaning and purpose.

With the launch of the 2019 academic year, all first-year students and sophomores

now live within one of four Residential Commons, living-learning communities of the kind one sees at many leading colleges.

This is thanks in large part to the opening of the University’s two newest residences, Burke Hall and Jane Pinchin Hall. Social activities and traditions are starting to form within each Residential Commons, giving them distinctive identities. Faculty are frequent visitors for topical lectures and philosophical conversations with students.

During arrival weekend, each Residential Commons hosted first-year orientation sessions around academic success, living at a college, diversity and inclusion, and wellness issues. First-year seminar courses are linked to every Residential Commons and taught in classrooms located within each of the Residential Commons.

“Through faculty and staff leadership, the walls of the classroom have become porous, and opportunities for continued learning extend into the residential experience,” Hucks says. “Living and learning are important directives that have resulted in innovative FSEM links, committed faculty affiliates, expanded forms of mentorship, and an ongoing collaborative menu of intellectual and social programs for our firstand second-year students.”

The ultimate goal is to create a form of residential living on campus that prepares students for life beyond campus. “It prepares students for the world, for living with people who are different from themselves, connecting across differences, and learning about one another,” McLoughlin says.

“Within the Residential Commons system, they will have conversations that are a little more intellectual than they might have in other environments and listen in ways that actually help them become more informed about one another.”

For those whose time outside the classroom includes Division I athletics, The Third-Century Plan also addresses efforts to increase support for coaching staff, who serve as mentors and teachers in their own right. There is also a renewed focus Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 31

on the University’s athletics facilities and new athletics scholarships. “Right now, we have varsity coaches and administrators in three different buildings,” Nicki Moore, vice president and director of athletics, says.

Plans developing as part of the package of first initiatives include a renovation of Reid Athletic Center that would open up more space for staff. “Current plans would put us in Class of 1965 Arena and Reid Athletic Center, alleviating space issues while continuing to keep the coaches proximate to each other.” As in the University’s academic buildings, where biologists share hallways with geographers, coaches from different sports find common cause when they commingle. “We have seen it already in the Class of 1965 Arena, where soccer, lacrosse, and hockey coaches work together,” Moore says. “Hockey adapted drills that are actually for soccer, because they were trying to figure out how to do something that they saw soccer doing really well. The new facility has enhanced collaboration.”

Having received the benefit of a residential education — and, in some cases, having collected the learning experiences that come with playing sports at the highest level — undergraduates will be looking toward life after Colgate. Career Services, the Office of National Fellowships and Scholarships, and the University’s entrepreneurship efforts are amassed in Benton Hall and begin helping in the quest from the moment of enrollment.

These offices will receive additional support, through the plan, to bolster programs that already set the pace among Colgate’s peers.

“Career discernment is not separate from intellectual growth; that is a false dichotomy,” Casey says. “Career services is not the thing you do at the end of your Colgate career, but a learning process throughout your time on campus — as much a learning process as your firstyear seminar or classes within your major. Let us view this not as a service, but as an educational experience that our students are going through, and we want them to do it well.”

32 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

IV Improving the campus environS

J.S. Hope

Colgate must carefully steward one of its most precious assets: its campus…

Enhancing the beauty of the campus, improving its infrastructure, and preserving its natural and built environment for future generations must remain high University priorities.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 37

Nicki Moore

→

This fall, Colgate opened two new residences on the upper quadrangle, Burke Hall and Jane Pinchin Hall, which have added to a distinguished and distinctive collegiate skyline. Alongside Benton Hall, they are two of the latest and most obvious examples of Colgate’s intentional commitment to the beauty of its historic campus.

“Beauty is not an addition, nor is it something that you hope comes to pass,” Casey says. “It affects the experience, and it is something that is shared by everybody — every staff member, every faculty member, every student — so you have to take care of it.”

It turns out that beauty is more than grass-deep. Beneath buildings both new and old runs the infrastructure that provides warmth in those harrowing Hamilton winters and electricity to operate classroom technology — not to mention the plumbing, fiber optics, and numerous additional utilities that allow a community to study the Dark Ages without experiencing them. All of this is under careful scrutiny and will be addressed as the University implements The Third-Century Plan.

“We understand, for example, that our steam lines need to be improved,” says J.S. Hope ’97, senior vice president for finance and administration and chief investment officer. “We set money aside each year so that we can actually do them, because these are complex projects. It is not just $50,000.

It is $600,000 and $700,000. We think about that, and as we work on a specific part of campus — building Pinchin, Burke, and Benton halls — we see what infrastructure we can review while we are in the ground.

Because you’re never going to dig up the Quad just to take a look.”

The First Initiatives The Third-Century Plan identifies first initiatives designed to move the University toward the obtainment of longer-term goals.

Current resources will allow Colgate to take these first steps.

Financing the Fundamentals Any proposed new activity or endeavor will have to be considered against available resources and potential fundraising support.

It is imperative that the implementation of these initiatives, in total, result in a financially stronger institution.

— The Third-Century Plan, p. 5

Hope can’t sneak a look under the sod, but he does keep an eye on the bottom line, which, according to the plan, is one of the major deciders of how and when initiatives will be adopted. Any proposal must advance one of the four fundamentals and find a place within the budget, either through current sources of revenue or specific fundraising efforts.

“I do not think that being fiscally responsible means we cannot be ambitious,” Casey says. “Well-run, ambitious institutions garner the resources they need and steward them properly.”

It falls to Hope to do that particular aspect of stewardship, and his background managing the University’s endowment is

vital to the effort. “Our reliance on financial markets is the highest that it has ever been,” he says. “The endowment is 25% of the operating budget, and to manage it, we try to smooth volatility. In 2018, my guess is that many people lost money in their retirement accounts, but we made money. If the endowment is making steady progress, that math works better for the institution than if we expand into a big decline. Colgate has managed its endowment in the same way for 25 years, and we believe that our asset allocation sees us through difficult market cycles.”

The nuances of preserving a university endowment are Greek to some people.

But no one can misunderstand Casey’s assurances, made plain during his numerous presentations, that The Third-Century Plan is intended to leave Colgate in a stronger financial position. It’s a point reiterated by members of the board, who are responsible for ensuring that the intention comes to pass.

“Part of the plan is to develop financial resources to support the long-term mission of the University,” Herling says. “We’re investing to make this institution the best Colgate it can be.”

The best-possible Colgate will draw in the most talented professors and brightest students. It will be a community known for its academic rigor, where students find no intellectual barriers between classrooms and living spaces. It will be beautiful and well managed. It will engage and inspire those who know it best — its alumni and friends. “With The Third-Century Plan, we are acknowledging that we are going to have reasons to raise money for the long term,” Burke says. “We will be harnessing the energy of all the people who want to move the University forward. People want to be included, and we have a lot of alumni who have never really been asked to support the University. They probably think, ‘Well, they don’t need me; there are some big donors there, so I’m not important.’ That’s not true — everyone is important.”

Attracting and Supporting Outstanding Students and Faculty Initiate a phased approach to No-Loan Policy Extended pre-tenure leave initiative Diversity, equity, and inclusion planning

Strengthening the University’s Academic Enterprise First projects for the middle campus: arts, creativity, and innovation The Robert Hung Ngai Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative — renovation of Olin Hall

Enriching the Student Experience Complete implementation of Residential Commons system Broad Street neighborhood renewal Renovation of University- owned apartments and townhouses Increased athletics scholarships and financial aid Athletics facilities — Reid renovation Student preparation through enhanced Career Services Improving the Campus and the Environment Comprehensive plan for improving campus Complete the Bicentennial tree planting Hamilton Initiative Part 2 Hamilton Village housing

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 33

THE

WRITE STUFF

Students in the Class of 2023 demonstrated that they have the smarts, initiative, and heart to become the newest members of the Colgate community.

Get to know some of them through their application essays.

Parfait Kabore

34  Colgate Magazine  Autumn 2019

Corinna Yee

Justin Moore

Talia Yavorek

Get to know Kabore:

Lessons From a First Grader

By Parfait Kabore

A

shudder ran up her spine. She was hunched over a stack of notebooks, face constricted in concentration, oblivious to the buzzing of mosquitoes and the motley scents and sounds of a typical West African night.

A pen stuck awkwardly in her trembling hand, she was drawing characters from a practice book.

Writing each letter seemed to take forever, but her patience was of steel.

Satisfied, Rahinatou proceeded to pronounce the strange shapes she had scribbled. It was an endearing scene. Face lit up with glee, lips quivering, she slowly articulated each syllable, the way an infant uttered its first words.

“I am proud of you,” I told my 44-year-old mother. I was in grade 11, and my mother was in grade 1.

I am continually baffled by my mother’s dedication to things she aspires to do. At age 6, she recalls, she was sent to school for about a week, then taken out “because she was a girl.” Nonetheless, her dream of learning how to read and write persisted through adulthood. After almost four decades of delay, she was finally getting around to it. However, it didn’t happen without a cost.

In Burkina Faso, literacy rates are alarmingly low, and the lowest among women. Enrolling in night school was an act of rebellion, especially from a married female.

Women who go out at night are looked down upon as frivolous, and those who pursue education are a threat to the patriarchy. My mother did both.

Sitting every night, seeing my mother sigh with frustration or giggle with satisfaction as she went through her homework, or helping her through basic arithmetic problems, I slowly became aware of my own relationship with education, the thing she craved so much.

Until then, I had fallen into a routine of mechanical and purposeless studying, with no depth in my academic pursuits, save for the occasional economics or evolutionary psychology article. I had lost my primal drive. Seeing it again through my own mother was inspiring and eye-opening.

I was fortunate to have been put into school. She was not. Her unquenchable thirst for education was denied to her. Thanks to scholarships and grants, I went further than any of my predecessors. She did not rely on anyone’s financial support to enroll. Most importantly, I had my parents’ support all along, whereas she was bucking societal norms to make her aspiration a reality.

I snapped out of passive learning. I went from doing it for the grade back to doing it out of genuine interest.

For instance, the thesis paper for my yearlong junior seminar course was on the evolution of altruism, a field

Illustrations by Alex Green

→→ Hometown: Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (he is Colgate’s first student from this country)

→→ Brought from home: “My people’s traditional cotton garment.”

that had previously piqued my interest but had receded to the back of my mind. I went back to voraciously reading my favorite topics. Once again, conversations →→ “I am a minimalist were inevitably leading to discussions about topics such and a vegetarian. as the evolutionary history of human aggression or the My proficiencies moral implications of the invisible hand. My peers were include perceptive of that shift, some calling it “dedication.” songwriting, Thus, I stopped taking education for granted. Instead, I soccer, and embraced the privileges afforded by literacy and refocused photography.” my community service on education-related activities.

My mother is now in grade 2, and she is enjoying every bit of it. There will come a time when she and I will →→ He has been learning English as have debates on topics ranging from the Cold War to the a third language significance of climate change. I can hardly wait. In the since 9th grade. meantime, I’ll be diving into my passions, and carefully He is the first in his building debate-relevant knowledge, because she is a family to graduate terrific debater. I fear she will be able to annihilate my from high school. arguments by the time she gets to middle school.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 35

A Modern-Day Chaucer

By CORINNA YEE

A

lfred was the name of my French horn in the sixth grade (I had an obsession with the British Royals). The horn is and will always be the love of my life, perhaps because it isn’t a piano that my mother forced me to sit at. Before school started, I always popped into the band room to get some practice in before a day of classes. I was a serious 11-year-old who had her mind set on learning etudes, acing my classes, and not letting misbehaving students distract me. Think Hermione Granger, but with less personality and more bad hair days. I was the elegant, poised, and well-spoken lady my dear mother had raised me to be.

One day, at the beginning of a typical solo rehearsal, my band director casually asked me if I was playing “Danny Boy.” “You’re damn right,” I quickly exclaimed. He looked at me bemused, as if I were a tutu-wearing dog on a tightrope, before bursting out in laughter. It was the first time he heard me use any hint of humor. Prior to that, he had only seen me as the shy, headband-wearing shrimp whose mom had to hem her uniform slacks and roll her cardigan sleeves. It wasn’t until that moment that my teacher realized that underneath my “scholarly” facade was a dry-witted band nerd who had a sense of humor.

In reality, I have been fascinated with the world of comedy all my life. After watching Seinfeld at 3 years old with my dad, who always had a joke in his holster, I slowly picked up on the importance of being able to laugh. Humor helped me to cope with everything, whether it was understanding why my demanding tiger mom was so hard on me (it turned out the piano was really expensive), or why it’s so shocking for people when they find out I’m better at subjects in the

36 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

humanities instead of STEM. My sense of humor helps me to understand different points of view. It gives me the ability to communicate with all types of people, even the most stone-cold giants who could throw me like a football. It has saved me from bullies, awkward family reunions, and rowdy toddlers.

Comedy has been my rock and my beloved companion. I’ve never been a very emotional person, thanks to my mom. I don’t write all of my feelings in a diary or post brooding photos of myself on social media. I put them in my pretend stand-up comedy routine, which I deliver through a cringe-worthy performance to my parents in the living room.

I guess you could say I’m on track to becoming a modern-day Chaucer. But hey, I don’t use my humor to just entertain myself; I use my powers to help others, too. When my friends fall, I always try to spot them with a quick dose of laughs (note: prescribe WISELY). Even my history teacher couldn’t resist my video for our end-of-the-semester Ottoman Empire funeral, for which I was awarded the prestigious Pez dispenser for being the most creative (don’t ask how things got to that point).

Although it’s sometimes risky to use humor, it is still a beautiful art form that should be cherished. It has the power to unite, attack, and defend (things that I could never do with my horn — though Beethoven’s Third Symphony is a close second and delivers a similar zesty rush). When in the hands of the right people, it can promote change, love, and growth.

Complemented by my mom’s bulletproof spirit, my dad’s iron wit is simply my greatest superpower as it gives me the strength and courage to be my own self.

The comedienne adds: →→ Hometown: Annapolis, Md.

→→ Brought from home: “A portrait of Morty from Rick and Morty that I bought with my dad at ComicCon. For 13 years, my dad and I attended the annual Baltimore ComicCon, where we marveled at the artwork, costumes, and celebrity guests.

The picture always makes me laugh because of Morty’s dramatic gaze into the distance, while serving as a fun reminder of my special tradition with my dad.”

Immeasurable Growth

More about Moore:

→→ Hometown: Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

By Justin Moore

A

nyone who has ever taken a big test knows the feeling: the sweaty-palmed, heart-in-your-throat sensation of heavy anticipation as the teacher hands back the graded exams. Did I pass? Will I do better than average? These questions race through my mind, only this particular day I’m not in school. Instead of at a desk, I’m sitting on an examination table at my doctor’s office, sweaty hands sticking to the crinkly white paper as I await the results. I hear footsteps approaching. It’s time for my annual growth chart readout.

A quick knock at the door, and in shuffles the doctor holding my chart. He greets me as he scans scribbled notes from my “weigh-in.” The suspense is agonizing.

“Everything looks very good. You’re in the 9th percentile for height and still growing.” He smiles, radiating a cheerfulness that is not mutual. “You’re what we call a late bloomer. Give it time.” My heart sinks. There goes another checkup and another year of waiting for the growth spurt that never seems to come.

For as long as I can remember, I have been a 9th percentile kid. The little yellow growth record that my mom kept in her purse was proof. It noted that my older brother, Jacob, had reached full height in 8th grade.

My sister, Amanda, three years younger, had somehow hoarded all of the family growth hormones and reached the 90th percentile for height by age 7. At family gettogethers, aunts and uncles would gush about how much taller Jacob and Amanda were getting, then turn to me and ask, “…and how’s school going for you?”

I endured years of this despite my parents’ best efforts. More than once, they took me to see a pediatric endocrinologist. I remember my first appointment was pleasant enough until it came time for the dreaded Tanner Scale test of physical maturity. Whoever Tanner was must have been of questionable character to be the namesake of this mortifying examination, involving all types of measuring devices and no underwear. Imagine forgetting to wear pants to school and getting graded on it.

There was also the chronic physical pain associated with my delayed growth. Much of my teenage life had been spent bouncing from doctor to doctor, discussing growth-plate disorders like Osgood-Schlatter, Sever’s disease, and apophysitis. Enchanting as they may sound, these growing pains of the hips, knees, and heels are no fun. Yet as my glass-is-half-full mom reminded me, “at least the pain means you’re still growing, honey.”

Despite vertical and medical challenges, I found playing sports as a way to prove that height leveled the playing field. I quickly realized that in soccer and basketball, the closer you are to the ground, the harder it is for the big guys to steal the ball. Advantage: me.

I discovered that I was having fun just playing and competing, especially against guys twice my size. More

importantly, I learned a lot about teamwork and how the best teams are sometimes made of players of all sizes.

Through hard work and humility, I earned the respect of my varsity soccer teammates, and this year they voted me captain. Not bad for the little guy.

Last summer I worked as a camp counselor. Though I was shorter than many of the campers (and often confused for one), I had the time of my life working with the kids, and they loved me for it. I also attended Boys State, where I was elected assemblyman and gave a speech to my constituents, attacking another fear head on. Success again. Through these experiences, I discovered that I have a voice that transcends my size; I’m just as powerful as the next guy. I’ve grown to understand that height doesn’t define me, it just makes me harder to find in a crowd. What I once saw as an injustice of stature is now my will to embrace it.

→→ Three words his best friend would use to describe him: Accepting, funny, involved.

Moore, who says, “the feeling I get when I volunteer is like no other,” volunteered with both a special needs soccer program and a homeless shelter/ soup kitchen while in high school.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 37

Sowing Seeds

By Talia Yavorek

I

believe in symbols, metaphors, and coincidences.

I believe everything happens for a reason. I believe people teach you something. I believe there is good in the world and everyone is born without bias. I believe in sunflowers.

Sunflowers grow tall and vibrant, electric yellow strokes against a pale robin’s egg sky. In the center lies a deep, dark, dense black hole holding all the petals, splayed out like eyelashes with a brown iris, the window to the soul. Sunflowers grow toward the light, facing the sun, their warmth, their nurturer, their positivity.

I believe in sunflowers. My grandfather grew sunflowers. He grew the tallest of sunflowers, the brightest and strongest. He was a sunflower himself.

He grew from the dirt up. He was born in poverty on a farm, with an alcoholic, abusive father and his mother, his sunflower. She was tough, intelligent, and did everything she could to raise her children right. She raised a family that was strong, smart, and illuminated the world like sunflowers.

My grandfather grew sunflowers with me. In his garden full of lush, tiered dahlias and ombré, dainty zinnias, dotted with juicy, red cherry tomatoes and beans plump with ripeness, the things that rose above everything else were the sunflowers. They were taller than little me on my grandfather’s shoulders. I believed those sunflowers could touch the sun. They believed they could too.

My grandfather had a genius IQ. He never went to college, but he made sure his children did. He took selfimprovement classes. He never stopped growing. He saw the light of education and the importance of other’s perspectives. He knew the value of a positive outlook and appreciation of the simple things. He taught his family that the world is a reflection of yourself and to take a mental picture of beautiful things in life.

I was given National Geographic magazines by my grandfather at a young age. Before I could read, I would look at the pictures and be captivated by what they depicted, from mountains in the sky to animals on the prowl. He instilled the love of learning and questioning in me. He created my love for the world and history of life and how people interact. He gave me experiences on farms and boats. He exposed me to the beauty in life, like how strong queen bees are and how quiet the ocean is at night, how to patiently wait for a fish and how to tell which direction is east. He showed me the sunflowers in the world around me.

He treated everyone with kindness, a father and grandfather to all. He inquired about my braces that stayed on for longer than intended and always brought me poetry contest forms to see if I wanted to enter. He brought me to agricultural days and smiled at everyone.

38 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

Her roots:

→→ Hometown: Cheshire, Conn. →→ Brought from home: A quilt her godmother made her for graduation →→ Why she chose Colgate: “My brother went to Colgate, so it’s been my dream school ever since I was a little kid.”

He bought me ice cream when I was crying and flowers on my birthday. He had the bright, optimistic, inviting quality of a sunflower.

I am a sunflower now because of him.

He taught me to be kind to people. I make friends with everyone and smile whether I know them or not. I read about the world and want to make it a better place. I still write with the emotions he taught me to have. I write about the beauty he showed me. His fervor for education motivates me every day. He taught me not only how to grow sunflowers but also how to be one— tall, strong, intelligent, positive. He was the sun and I was the sunflower growing toward all he taught me. I yearn to grow constantly, like a sunflower. I desire to grow in new ways, new places, and spread my light in the new experience of college.

I believe in illuminating the lives of those around me and showing where the sun is, where optimism shines. I believe in being a sunflower.

THE CLASS OF 2023

9,951

10%

Applications

International students

2,244

22%

(23%) Accepted

Domestic students of color

3.82

27

Accepted students’ average GPA

Countries represented; dual citizens represent an additional 18 countries

790

55%

45%

Enrolled

Female

Male

Admission statistics are accurate as of June 1

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 39

Endeavor Entrepreneurship

When It Comes to This Soda, Less Is More

We’re trying to hit every soda trend we can.

Steve Hersh ’87 refines your guilty pleasure.

n America’s plight to be more health conscious, the daily can of pop has gone by the wayside: Bottled water sales surpassed soft drinks in 2016, according to Business Insider. And, with the LaCroix craze and kombucha rising in the ranks, consumers have dramatically changed their afternoon pick-me-up. Steve Hersh ’87 saw it coming.

He started his company, Grown-Up Soda (GuS), in 2003 as a reaction to the low-to-nosugar beverage trend. By creating products made with real juice, natural extracts, and 40% less sugar, he offers buyers a soda option with fewer ingredients than brand giants like Coke and Pepsi. “[When I started the company], I just said, ‘What’s missing on the market?’”

Hersh recalls. Drawing upon his experience as brand manager of A&W Root Beer, he remembered: “I used to work on this soda brand, but I didn’t really like what I was selling because it was way too sweet.”

Hersh used his know-how from earning a master’s at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and his Colgate economics major to establish a business plan. He started GuS with his wife out of his maroon Subaru Outback, delivering cases of 12-ounce glass bottles around New York City and New Jersey.

Sixteen years later, his product is in major metropolitan areas, from Chicago to Seoul.

“A lot of people flame out when they try to be everywhere,” Hersh says, so he limits

I

40 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

his distribution to high-end restaurants like Napa Valley’s The French Laundry and gourmet groceries like New York’s Zabar’s.

Hersh says he’s stayed relevant due to his willingness to change the flavors and ingredients of his fizzy drinks, rather than relying on one star product. “We’re trying to hit every soda trend we can,” he says.

Among those trends are creative concoctions. When a friend waxed on about how GuS’s cranberry lime soda made a good mixer, Hersh and his team ran with the idea, producing a line of four cocktail mixers.

Think old favorites like mojito and tonic and lime, ready to mix into alcohol or provide an easy mocktail.

He’s also tapped into the health drink market. “People are looking for benefits in their beverages,” he says, “like ‘this kombucha is going to help my gut’ or ‘this drink is going to give me energy, protein, or make me live longer.’” Ginger ale is his most popular soda, so he built off of the plant’s health benefits to adjust the drink, adding more ginger. To up the health ante, he used low-calorie sweeteners like monk fruit and stevia extracts. Their slim cans are trendy too.

But what will really change the soda game? The invention of low-calorie sweeteners that taste exactly like sugar.

“That is the holy grail that they have not cracked,” he says.

Hersh is on the hunt. ● — Rebecca Docter

GuS often sponsors food events, where Hersh has rubbed elbows with celebrities like Ethan Hawke and the cast of Law and Order.

endeavor

When Laura McDonald ’10 (center) isn’t curating Rad Max, she works as an actress.

STYLE

Laura McDonald Is Making Your ’90s Dreams Come True he likes to refer to herself as an ad for Saved By the Bell. It shows.

Commonly clad in frayed denim shorts, Doc Martens, and one of her many vintage sweatshirts, Laura McDonald ’10 radiates the ’90s aesthetic that’s so popular today. And with a collection of 700 curated pieces in her online boutique, Rad Max Vintage, she’s bringing a little piece of the decade to the future.

“There’s a certain joy to the 1990s,” McDonald says. “It was a little simpler, a little bit smoother before social media and the internet.” With Rad Max, she aims to bring that feeling to those who grew up in the era.

An avid sports fan, most of McDonald’s stock is composed of memorabilia; she has threads for teams ranging from her beloved

tristan onfroy

S

New York Giants to the now-defunct Hartford Whalers. Dazzling blue, cropped bomber jackets; oversized crewnecks; and a few fuchsia ski suits make up a fraction of pieces in her collection. Started in December 2018, selling at bars and markets around Los Angeles, her business is booming less than a year since its inception.

It’s apparel with teams like the extinct Whalers, or franchises that have changed color schemes or logos, that people order the most. For die-hard supporters of teams like the New England Patriots, which switched its minuteman logo in 1992, sporting the old image shows they’re not just fairweather fans.

Pulling on those nostalgic strings, McDonald says she hunts for pieces

that remind people of their childhoods: sweatshirts that are worn and soft, oversized T-shirts, and cozy hoodies. “I want them to feel like they’ve reached into the back of their dad’s closet and pulled out something he hasn’t worn since they were in second grade,” she says.

“It’s part of the whole branding of it. I love bright colors, high ponytails, choker necklaces, crop tops — all of it,” says McDonald, who drives her turquoise Jeep Wrangler, dubbed “Kelly Kapowski,” when looking for merchandise.

But besides her love of fashion, McDonald enjoys selling these vintage pieces because they provide connections for strangers.

“LA is a city of transplants,” she says. The camaraderie that accompanies being a team’s fan brings otherwise strangers together.

Looking fresh doesn’t hurt, either.

— Rebecca Docter A sampling of teams on Rad Max Vintage: →→ New Orleans Saints →→ Boston Red Sox →→ Chicago Bulls →→ Pittsburgh Penguins →→ Notre Dame Fighting Irish Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 41

endeavor

WELLNESS

Helping Heal From Within Through yoga, Stephen Redmon ’80 teaches people to cope with trauma.

ollowing multiple deployments, a young veteran was suffering from severe PTSD when Stephen Redmon ’80 met him two years ago. The veteran’s unit had one of the highest suicide rates in the Army, and his family was concerned for his well-being.

“They were at their wits’ end,” says Redmon.

So the veteran attended one of Redmon’s yoga retreats, in Cuba, and “it worked,” says Redmon. There was a noticeable improvement in the young soldier’s PTSD, and he’ll be participating in the same retreat in December.

“These practices allow people to heal themselves,” says Redmon, who is a yoga/ meditation life coach, lawyer, and business consultant. “We have everything within; sometimes a person just needs a guide.”

Redmon leads yoga retreats around the world through his business, Nomder Yoga.

Helping people — often veterans — cope with trauma is his specialty.

A veteran himself, Redmon worked for the Department of Defense and then as special assistant to the general counsel of the Department of Veterans Affairs, from which he retired in 2018. The military now incorporates yoga and meditation into its physical training “because they’ve realized it is an integral part of total wellness for the soldier,” he explains.

Redmon taught himself yoga — through reading and practice — at Colgate as a way to overcome his own trauma from growing up in Harlem, surrounded by violence and rampant drug use.

“I spent a lot of time in Chapel House,” he says. “I just had to walk up the hill and it was like I was in another world.” The extensive book and music collection helped Redmon hone his meditation practice.

As a lifelong learner, he continues to deepen his understanding of yoga and holistic health to better serve others.

Redmon earned his advanced yoga teacher qualifications at Kripalu Yoga Center and is currently studying for an international yoga

therapist certification.

Based in Woodbridge, Va., he works with a variety of groups through Nomder Yoga — from Girl Scout troops to Christian groups.

Last summer, he co-facilitated the first iteration of the Kripalu School of Mindful Outdoor Leadership, which included an 11-day venture to the top of Mount Greylock (the highest point in Massachusetts). This summer, he led an outdoor experience for the Black Yoga Teachers Alliance.

And Redmon even initiates impromptu group yoga — sometimes advertising pop-up events with only 24 hours’ notice, and other

times in the spur of the moment. One day, while driving past the National Mall, he pulled over, grabbed 25 hula hoops from his trunk, and within five minutes had children, tourists, and police officers moving their bodies.

“It’s a labor of love,” says Redmon, who also teaches yoga at George Washington University. “There is a need for bringing people together across all types of racial, religious, and gender lines. I am enjoying being a part of the healing for individuals and communities.” ● — Aleta Mayne

42 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

Pictured here at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, Redmon uses yoga as a peace practice, a tradition dating back to Martin Luther King Jr.

André Chung

F

endeavor

ARt

Hat Tricks A

rmed with clay, aluminum foil, and faux hair, Brenda KillackeyJones ’96 went in for the kill.

Her prey was already dead.

in the know

Breaking Down Blockchain In the coming digital revolution, this technology is going to change your life.

Get ready, blockchain is coming here. Blockchain isn’t just a technology; it’s a paradigm shift that represents a change in how business is done. Its applications reach into industries of all types and play a key element in the convergence of new technologies such as big data, machine learning, AI, additive manufacturing, vertical farming, robotics, biotechnology, and the Internet of Things (IoT).

It’s more than a database.

Although blockchains are often

The Hatbox Ghost, a popular figure in Disneyland and Disney World’s famed Haunted Mansion ride, served as inspiration for one of Killackey-Jones’ latest sculptures. She recreated the spirit into a hanging piece, which she entered in Disney’s D23 Expo Design Challenge.

Deemed frightening enough to be a finalist, her version of the ghoul was displayed at the fan convention in August. “[The Hatbox Ghost] is a funky character — it’s one of the ones that everybody talks about,” she says.

A sculptor for the past five years, Killackey-Jones hones her craft preparing what she calls “mythological taxidermy” to sell at Renaissance festivals and Comic Cons. Ranging from emerald dragon heads to yeti busts, the pieces hang on walls for easy display. She came up with the moniker because she uses traditional taxidermy foam to make her figures. “I carved their faces, then re-sculpted it either as a dragon, a werewolf, or whatever I wanted it to be.

It would end up looking like a taxidermy form,” she says. “It was taxidermy, but it was mythological creatures.”

Like the animatronic Hatbox Ghost in the Haunted Mansion, Killackey-Jones’ sculpted version leaps out at the viewer, but

compared to databases, the differences are important. A blockchain is a network that shares or distributes data or proof of data. The data stored in a blockchain must be validated and made impossible to tamper with before it can be shared. Once it is written, it cannot be altered — it’s an “immutable record.” If the transaction code is altered or inaccurate, it can’t be properly decrypted, so the transaction is rejected. Each time a blockchain is updated with a new transaction block, that transaction must be verified before being distributed throughout the network.

Trust this. Each blockchain creates a protocol or set of protocols that promotes a transaction. It is essentially a peer-to-peer technology capable of creating networks between individuals, databases, corporate entities, and countries — networks that can be trusted because the technology

key differences show her creative hand. The original figure uses lighting to trick riders, first appearing with his head on straight, then with his head removed, resting in a hat box. Because she had size limitations for D23, Killackey-Jones eliminated the hatbox, choosing instead to give the top hat more play. “There are certain attributes that make the Hatbox Ghost recognizable,” she says. “[I had to] take the facial features and the eyes and the skeletal hands and then make them work within the constraints of the particular frame.”

After showing her piece at D23, Killackey-Jones went back to her home in Rochester, N.Y., to prepare for her next supernatural event: Halloween.

“Halloween is our favorite season,” she says. “We’ve got all sorts of things that I’ve made, like all of the creatures from The Nightmare Before Christmas in life size.”

— Rebecca Docter →→ Killackey-Jones has visited the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland and Disney World nearly 40 times combined. →→ Major: Art and art history →→ Day jobs: Art teacher and fitness instructor

eliminates the need for trust. (Oxymoron alert!) Blockchain disintermediates middlemen (and women), eliminating the need for centralized clearinghouses, such as banks and governments, to verify transactions.

Just around the corner. Let’s look (maybe) 10 years into the future as up-andcoming technologies become more common. For example, with autonomous vehicles, we’ve come to realize there’s much more to a transportation system than passengers and vehicles.

There’s “the machine economy” or “machine-to-machine” interactions: vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to–charging station, vehicle-to–parking garage, and vehicle-to-sensor. When electric autonomous vehicles stop at a light, they could be sitting atop or near a radiant electric charging

station, so they can drive all day without stopping to plug in to a charger. Each electrical “fillup” is a microtransaction that the car pays for with a blockchain “wallet,” which verifies the car’s identity and approves the transactions.

We might not be able to see what’s coming, and it might not take a linear path, but in time we’ll get there. We’re all taking part in building a new social operating system and a future where we restore connections with ourselves, with each other, with our environment, and with the products we consume.

Entrepreneur Samantha Radocchia ’11 slices and dices blockchain and cryptocurrencies in her new book, Bitcoin Pizza.

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 43

SALMAGUNDI Lost and Found This past Father’s Day, Jason Grum set out for Chesterland, Ohio, early in the morning, on the hunt for hidden gems in the historic township.

Armed with a metal detector, Grum stopped at the famed Silas Tanner House to swipe around the periphery. When his detector emitted a loud tone, he knew he had stumbled across an object far more valuable than a bottle cap.

What he didn’t know was he was about to unearth someone’s long-lost family treasure.

The object had been buried approximately 8 inches in the ground. Grum cleaned off clumps of clay and tangles of roots before realizing what he’d discovered. “I could see gold shining through,” he says. “It was an exhilarating find.”

As Grum dusted off the object, details began to appear: It was a Colgate class ring from 1969 with a crimson gemstone at its center. Its band was etched with the Colgate

Memorial Chapel on one side and Huntington Gymnasium on the other. The initials S.M.L. were engraved on the inside of the band.

“I knew I had to return it to the family,” Grum says. “I said to myself, ‘All the clues are here.’”

When he called Colgate to ask for help, Grum connected with alumni records assistant Sue Hodges, who searched the University’s database for alumni with the

initials S.M.L. Stephen M. Lowe ’69, an Ohio native, ticked all the boxes. Lowe had died 10 years ago, but Hodges found his son, Scott.

Grum called Scott, who verified that the ring was his father’s. Scott believes that his dad, who was a history major, was drawn to Chesterland due to its abundance of landmarks and its proximity to his hometown of Pepper Pike.

“I was in shock when I got the call,” Scott says. “My dad had fond memories and great friends from his time at Colgate — but he never said anything about a class ring.”

The discovery of the ring on Father’s Day adds a special layer of meaning for Scott. “It’s an incredible piece of my dad that we can hold on to forever,” he says.

With three daughters of his own, Grum believes in leading by example and paying it forward. “The world could use more humanity,” he says. “It’s about helping your fellow man and performing an act of kindness for someone you’ve never met.”

— Celine Turkyilmaz ’21

Connect Five After solving these questions, figure out the Colgate connection that the answers share.

See p. 83 for the solutions.

1

Founded in 1852, this St. Louis brewing company was named after two German immigrants. One of the men — the answer to this clue — is also the namesake of two amusement parks.

2 3 4 5

If you visit this location in New York City’s East Village, you’ll find “18 miles of books.”

An inherited disorder that results in the death of brain cells, this disease is diagnosed through genetic testing.

Meaning “cunning,” this word was first introduced in the 13th century, with its etymology traced to Middle English.

President Ulysses S. Grant established the first national one of these in 1872 — it’s spread across three states.

The Colgate connection: 84 Colgate Magazine Autumn 2019

Clipped

From the Colgate Maroon, Oct. 25, 1935

“Washington Students Active, Visit Supreme Court Session” by Kirby Peake ’37 Washington —There are signs of direction in activity of the extramural study group here as the experiment turns into the fifth week. With all students now placed in administrative departments, there has been some integration of seminar work and observational, or “internship,” instruction. Things generally are looking up.

It is evident, even at this early stage in the game, that proximity of the group to the physical scene of national government has given the students a certain enthusiasm for their work that probably is not attainable on any campus in the country. And this in face of a paradoxical “week-end” spirit likewise permeating the off-campus group.

All students have witnessed a session of the Supreme Court by now. This correspondent was fortunate to gain admittance to the first meeting of the court in its new $10 million home…

Led by Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, members of the bench bowed in turn to officers of the court and took their seats in chairs brought over from the old chamber in the Capitol…

Chief Justice Hughes might well be the most dignified appearing man in the United States. And yet at his right Justices Butler and Roberts, the latter of whom cast the deciding vote in the invalidation of NRA codes last May, exchanged notes, whispers and smiles throughout the session.

Ten of the undergraduates and Dr. Jacobsen were guests of the Washington Alumni Association at a dinner Wednesday night at the fashionable Tildden apartments on Connecticut Avenue. There were 22 Colgate alumni present.

The 1935 study group was Colgate’s first, and it was the first program of its kind in Washington, D.C. This spring, students will continue the tradition. Led by political science professor Michael Hayes, the group will visit the Department of Justice, Environmental Protection Agency, and Securities and Exchange Commission; have sessions with policy experts; and tour the White House, Senate, and Supreme Court.

13 Words (or fewer) 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.

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

Autumn 2019 Colgate Magazine 85

13 Oak Drive Hamilton, NY 13346-1398

In This Issue

p.67

Study chamber music p.19

Pass the ball to a professional soccer player p.80

Practice mindful meditation in nature p.42

Learn life lessons from elders p.8

Cure Alzheimer’s disease p.22

See how Afghanistan has transformed p.58

Sculpt ghoulish creatures p.43

Meet Colgate’s newest faculty members p.10

Jam with roller derby star Emily Rawdon ’10 p.78

Research the effects of stress on children’s sleep p.17

Tour the Russian Arctic from your computer p.15

JILL CALDER

Go back to school — after retirement

Score some vintage threads p.41