Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

WINTER 2022

Immersion

In NYC, students learn the film and media industry P.40 research

The psychology of ‘tight’ vs. ‘loose’ cultures P.38 Voices

Professor Peter Balakian releases new poetry P.10

COLOR WAYS

Kimber (Clark) ’87 Baldwin blends art and science to produce multihued yarn P.48

look Warming by the campfires, making s’mores, and gazing at fireworks — Family Weekend 2021 was a celebratory gathering.

Approximately 3,250 people visited campus Oct. 22–24 for the first family weekend since the pandemic hit. Colgate offered a variety of ways to gather, many of them outdoors.

Read this issue and all previous issues at colgate.edu/magazine.

andrew daddio

Winter 2022

Colgate Magazine

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Photo / Art Credit

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look

mark diorio

Snowflakes fall on Seven Oaks as it undergoes its seasonal transition from awardwinning golf course to cross country ski trail.

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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Contents

WINTER 2022 President’s Message

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The Fossils That Have No Bones Liz Rampe ’05, the deputy principal investigator for the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover, studies Mars-analog samples.

Letters

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Fashion Forward Alumni are taking style to the next level, working at some of today’s most exciting brands, managing e-commerce, and launching their own lines.

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Voices

Kaleidoscopic Memory Professor Peter Balakian publishes No Sign, his first poetry collection since the Pulitzer Prize–winning Ozone Journal.

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The Bookworm and the Parasite Library reading inspired scientist John Jimah ’08 to fight malaria.

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Scene

Colgate News 12

Discover

The Great Art Debate How should Western museums that were built on colonial pillaging right their wrongs?

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Strength in Numbers To help their peers ask new questions and make statistics more accessible, two Colgate researchers formed the Data Science Collaboratory.

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Iron Fist or Kid Gloves?

Psychologist Michele Gelfand ’89 researches whether nations are culturally “tight” or “loose” and how those distinctions factor into the ways countries manage a crisis.

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Cover: A Colgate chemistry major who learned to knit from a classmate, Kimber (Clark) ’87 Baldwin creates custom-dyed skeins of luxurious yarn. Read about her in “Color Ways” on p. 48.

Photo by Ross Van Pelt

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Behind the Scenes Students immerse themselves in New York City while learning from film and media industry insiders.

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Vice President for Communications Laura H. Jack Managing Editor Aleta Mayne Assistant Editor Rebecca Docter Senior Director, Communications and Strategic Initiatives Mark Walden Chief Creative Officer Tim Horn Art Director Karen Luciani University Photographer Mark DiOrio Communications Specialist Kathy Jipson Contributors: Kelli Ariel, web manager; Ben Badua, campaign communications director; Daniel DeVries, senior director, communications and media relations; Jordan Doroshenko, director, athletic communications; Sara Furlong, advancement communications manager; Garrett Mutz, graphic designer; Brian Ness, University video producer; Kristin Putman, social media strategist Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt. Colgate Magazine Volume LI Number 2

Endeavor

Color Ways

Colgate Magazine is a quarterly publication of Colgate University.

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

Kimber (Clark) ’87 Baldwin uses her own dye-application methods to make intricate yarns for fiber artists, designers, and brides.

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‘Mom’s on the Phone Talking About Caskets Again’ In this digital age, customization is at the forefront of the consumer’s mind.

Why shouldn’t that extend to plans for the afterlife?

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It’s in His Nature From the Florida Everglades to the Mayan rain forests, documentarian Rich Kern ’66 has captured habitats for almost 50 years.

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Alumni News

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Closing the Loop Stuart Wood ’97 is turning plastic bottles into apparel.

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Salmagundi

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Change of Address: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398 Telephone: 315-228-7453 Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the University, the publishers, or the editors. Colgate University does not discriminate in its programs and activities because of race, color, sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, or any other protected category under applicable local, state, or federal law. For inquiries regarding the University’s non‑discrimination policies, contact Tamala Flack, Title IX coordinator and equity and diversity officer, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; 315-228-7014.

Winter 2022

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President’s Message

Questions for the Future

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think through their implications straightaway. I offer them as matters for us to consider together.

First, What Will It Mean to Work at Colgate?

What about the world of work? What does it mean to work on a campus? Through the most turbulent moments of the pandemic, New York State provided the answer to this question for Colgate and for all New York colleges and universities: All nonessential workers were to stay remote. With the reopening of the state, the University required that most employees return to campus unless there were compelling personal or medical reasons to prevent it.

We are a residential university, and we believe that the true Colgate experience takes place when people gather together. We must be together. We gather not out of habit — because it is what we have always done — but because this is the best way to teach, learn, and discover how to be empathetic in relation with others.

These interactions are not confined to the classroom but take place in residence halls, dining halls, on fields and courts, and countless other spaces up and down the Hill. Consequently, professors and students as well as support staff must be here in Hamilton. This core truth will not change.

But as the nation and the world embrace remote work — or as people require it due to their personal situations — how will we accommodate the needs of our employees and assist in the challenges of managing their responsibilities by relying on technology as appropriate?

What will it mean for our own in-person operations

Above: Students in the biology course Vertebrate Physiology Lab, instructed by Associate Professor Ana Jimenez

mark diorio

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ast November’s issue of Colgate Magazine arrived in mailboxes slightly later than anticipated due to, of all things, a paper shortage. This is not merely a problem experienced by our printer but an industrywide challenge, the latest in a series of supply chain difficulties triggered by the pandemic. More disruptions than the limited supply of paper occurred throughout the fall semester, most significantly with the struggles to staff the University’s operations.

In a number of divisions within the University, empty positions slowed down operations and placed significant burdens on staff members who remained in understaffed areas.

We must admit that this pandemic has affected our academic community in profound ways that go far beyond the delivery times of our publications. It has tested the boundaries of our compassion and our ability to demonstrate wisdom under extreme stress. At press time, the appearance of the omicron variant and the knowledge that this is only halfway through the Greek alphabet remind us that it is too early to say that all immediate danger has subsided.

We have found success, however, in relying on vaccinations and masking, and we have remained operational. This has allowed our community the luxury — or the obligation — to ask, “How have we changed, what does it all mean, and what are the implications?”

There are, of course, hundreds of such questions.

What follows is a brief look at four of these questions.

I cannot fully answer these now, but we must begin to

when central New York workers could be hired as telecommuting employees of the largest (or even smallest) enterprises in Silicon Valley?

We will always remember that Colgate is its people, and our mission is fundamentally different from that of other industries, requiring a physical presence in this beautiful place, but those who consider their own careers will have before them new options and new possibilities that we must recognize.

How Will We Teach and Learn?

The pandemic changed our perceptions of remote and asynchronous teaching. It showed us the potential of engaging across distance and time. It also underscored what cannot be done with technology.

When the University went remote in 2020, we were already familiar with Zoom and operated an online portal for coursework among many other electronic resources. In order to support the increased demand on our network bandwidth in a remote scenario, we strengthened our physical infrastructure of nodes and cables and unleashed the full creativity of the Center for Learning, Teaching, and Research — the office that partners staff and faculty in the pursuit of best practices for the transmission of knowledge. Before long, faculty were gathering at online roundtables to present the ways in which they were using additional technology to facilitate conversations in class, from software packages that allowed students to read and mark up texts as a group to the creation of research-based podcasts and implementation of specialized grading software. Scholars and thinkers from around the world could “visit” many of our classes

We are a residential university, and we believe that the true Colgate experience takes place when people gather together.

simply by clicking on their computers in Los Angeles, Sydney, or Nairobi.

And still these marvels that allowed us to persevere — and even enhance learning — were not full replacements for gathering around a table in Lathrop or enjoying an informal conversation with a colleague in a hallway of the Ho Science Center. The sharing of a random thought, a sudden flash of inspiration, or a spontaneous word of support does not take place on Zoom.

These technologies, however, will not go away. Nor should they. How they will be part of learning at Colgate will be a matter before us for years to come.

How Will We Engage the World?

What does the pandemic’s change mean for Colgate’s long-standing commitment to engagement with the world? The landscape of international engagement has been utterly transformed, and that landscape continues to look unsettled. This has massive implications for our faculty as well as our students.

A college president hesitates to rank the most troubling moments of a crisis, but the overnight withdrawal of our study groups from nations around the world in 2020 will live in my memory alongside countless other concerns that we addressed in those early days of the pandemic. Ever since, our Office of Off-Campus Study has maintained relationships and the full intention to return our students to partner institutions under the guidance of Colgate faculty members as soon as it is safe and possible. When students are unable to study ecology in one country, we look for similar opportunities in another. When there is a last-minute program cancellation, we will see to it that housing and robust academic experiences continue here in Hamilton for those students on a moment’s notice. But flexibility will be required. The study group tradition will continue, but we will have to remain agile.

For faculty, the closed borders had additional implications. For a large percentage of our faculty, research requires travel to archives, laboratories, election sites, and other universities. How can we keep the richness of our faculty’s research supported — research that supports excellent teaching — when the fundamental way research is undertaken is uncertain and might be so for months to come?

How Will We Stay Well?

What does pandemic change mean for mental health care, a growing demand on college campuses across the nation?

Even prior to the pandemic, the need for

mental health care services was growing.

The current generation of students arriving in Hamilton is more aware of mental health issues and less reluctant to request treatment than students in prior generations. Many have engaged in treatment at home, and, much as we provide a continuation of physical care, it is important to provide a similar continuation of mental health care to ensure that our students have every chance to focus on the demands we place upon them as scholars, student-athletes, researchers, performers, and active members of a large and creative community.

We were already in the process of increasing our capacity to address aspects of mental health when the pandemic arrived, bringing with it a significant rise in demand for already needed mental wellness services.

Colgate engaged a telepsychiatry partner to assist both with the volume of requests and the diversity of our providers. We have augmented group therapy options, and we continue to make mental health a topic of conversation in outreach to students rather than simply waiting for them to go to Conant House because the thought arises organically.

But we have a generation of students on our campus, and arriving soon, for whom the pandemic has been a significant cause for true distress. We will not completely know the impact of this crisis on our students’ well-being for years to come.

But we must now find ways to support our students in a changed, and stressful, world.

The Sense of Place We could spend many a Reunion College forum talking about all the ways in which the University has changed in light of the pandemic. And, as I noted above, the changes will take years to become fully manifested. I do think, however, that in some profound way, Colgate as a place — a place one comes to as a student or staff member, a place where scholars come to make their intellectual home, a place to which alumni return — will remain a constant. Throughout the pandemic, even as things were changing dramatically, I always felt that this sense of place, the beauty and purpose of this campus, was somehow a solid constant. I suspect this will remain true for decades to come.

In crises it is important to consider what is most important as well as what is true. That is what will be before all of us at Colgate as we continue to serve our mission and our community.

— Brian W. Casey Winter 2022

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Letters 2021, p. 32), having worked in and around the F&B sector for decades and also having been actively involved with some food specials on PBS as well as creating and staging a lot of high-end, artisanal food events.

Thanks for the really fun read!

Ken Zuckerman ’80

Cover Note As a Cape Cod resident, I’m looking forward to learning more and making a visit [to a restaurant owned by Mac Hay ’96]!

Corinne Costanzo ’84 Wickel Gastronomic Delight Congratulations. The food issue is a prize winner.

Alan Brown ’67 The autumn 2021 issue of the magazine is terrific from cover to cover and in every detail — the best I can remember, and I’ve been reading it assiduously in its various incarnations for decades.

Wonderfully imaginative and superbly executed.

Also, I happen to love the Hi-Life [owned by Earl Geer ’80, “Table Talk,” p. 35], which is in my son and daughter-in-law’s Upper West Side neighborhood.

My wife and I came upon it last year, unaware of — but delighted by — the Colgate connection.

The perfect Colgate spot!

The magazine’s marked improvement in the last few years is one — but only one — of many signs of striking institutional momentum. I couldn’t be more proud of or delighted by that. Go, ’gate!

Howard Fineman ’70 Really enjoyed the alum foodie feature (“Table Talk,” autumn

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Food Fight!

In response to the request for your dining hall memories (“Dining Through the Decades,” autumn 2021, p. 104): I came to Colgate in August 1973 to begin my freshman year. I lived in East Hall the last year it was an all-male dorm. We were known collectively as ‘Eastie Beasties.’ Except for one mass streaking event on one brisk fall night, the Beasties were normal Colgate freshmen. Occasionally, there was goalie practice in the halls. There was one pay telephone per floor, which people periodically answered ‘Yankee Stadium! Second Base!’ or some sort. One student hacked the fourth-floor phone to enable free long-distance calls for a short period of time. In other words, normal student life.

Then came philosophy and religion. P&R was stressful. I was not alone. The collective experience of the class caused angst among the freshmen, especially at finals. In December 1973, the night before the P&R final exam, there was a foot of wet snow on the campus.

Students were in their rooms or walking the halls, holding notebooks and muttering, cramming for P&R. The energy in the air was soon replaced by shouts and snowballs. A mass snowball fight broke out between East Hall and Andrews.

I don’t recall if West Hall and Stillman were caught up in the action too. The snowball fight

lasted well past midnight. Of course, it escalated. Andrews repelled an attack with a fire hose, and President Bartlett came down and yelled at everybody with a megaphone to stop and go to bed. The next day as we walked to the exam we noticed, with satisfaction, all of the snow was gone and peppered the dorm buildings.

How does any of this relate to the Student Union’s Hall of Presidents? Well, then spring 1974 came. It was a sunny day.

We all took our final P&R exam.

We were happy P&R was over.

As students lined up for lunch, a whisper, unnoticed by adults, passed along the food line — ‘food fight.’ I think this piece of information affected our selection of food. I did not seek to participate. We sat down at our tables, glancing around the room. The salad bar divided the Hall of Presidents neatly into two equal sides. Tension mounted during lunch. I do not recall who he was, but he knows he did it. He walked to the salad bar table and yelled ‘food fight!’ and launched the first shot. I likely threw something.

My friends and I dove under a small table as food splattered everywhere. (Mashed potatoes are effective.) The fight was over in a minute.

The aftermath: The adults noticed the food fight. All doors were shut. No one was going anywhere. The freshmen dean appeared. She was unhappy with this event. Students were given tools and pails of water to clean up the Hall of Presidents, which we did. We left satisfied.

Dwight Mengel ’77 As the last all-male class (1973), I have memories of being told in 1969 that we still needed to dress formally for Sunday dinners, including ties. We were also told that beanies were optional. While I remember scattered beanies at the start, the ties petered out even more quickly. I started out working in the hall staffing the food line under the stern authoritarian eye of Ms. K,

who was responsible for the cafeteria-style pickup line that all 600 freshmen filtered through. For me, it was a great way to meet the rest of my classmates as they picked out their meals from the display tables. I don’t remember how the first food fight happened, but I do remember when someone threw the first salad bowl across the hall. Everyone in the hall was tossing something.

Ms. K had no comment... As I rotated to washing dishes in the kitchen, I have fond memories of being trained on how to ladle the mashed potatoes into the exhaust fan above the back entrance that everyone left by when it was snowing outside, and, of course, collecting all the food trays that everyone took to slide back down the hill from the dorms for the next meal. Working the dining hall freshman year cured me of working on campus and I spent summers instead building up my gas money account in order to commute for true love in my upperclassman years.

Roger Wapner ’73

Virginia Vinos What a delight to read “We’ll drink to them” (autumn 2021, p. 50). While the West Coast and upstate New York are better known with regard to wine production, don’t forget about Virginia. Virginia is considered the birthplace of American wine, with a heritage stretching back to the 1600s. Since Thomas Jefferson famously tried, and failed, at growing grapes here, the Virginia wine industry has both grown and matured, with wines that compare favorably to

the best of our West Coast and European colleagues. Colgate is well represented among the ranks of the 300 or so Virginia wineries, with two Virginia wineries recently founded by Colgate alums: Rutger de Vink ’92, RDV Vineyards, and David Foster ’01, Mountain Run Winery.

David Foster ’01

Solving Seafood Supply Chain Issues Christine [Hebert ’12], I applaud your work on behalf of small-scale aquaculturists who are struggling to survive against large industrial-scale competitors (“Sea Change,” summer 2021, p. 66). We are facing a similar threat on Frenchman Bay in downeast Maine.

Paul Parshley ’72 Very proud of one of our environmental econ alumnae making big and important changes in the world economy.

Nicole Simpson, W. Bradford Wiley Professor of international economics; chair, Department of Economics

Erasing Stereotypes What a delight. I’m so proud of my fellow Colgate alum Dick Weiss [’73] for taking on the difficult issues of race in the St. Louis area (“Writing in Color,” summer 2021, p. 86).

Daniel Schramm ’75

Computer Science Success Stories Imagine my surprise to find myself in the middle of your picture with Dr. Brackett (“Colgate and the Machine,” summer 2021, p. 46). I believe it was taken in the Jan Plan of 1967. Dr. Brackett had been my freshman chemistry professor.

At the end of my sophomore year I was ready for change, and ran into him. He was also looking for change and suggested I try the new Jan Plan in computers that he was starting. Although it was 1967, and I was by then an English major, I thought computers were going to change the world, and I needed to understand what they were about. The class was rather small, but Dr. Brackett made it challenging and fun. The IBM 1620 machine took up most of a separate room.

Computers proved good to me. A classmate, Van Parker ’69, and I wrote a CBT program to teach English grammar and received honors for the Jan Plan. I was launched into computer science! Dr. Brackett had forced us to think logically, plan ahead, become more efficient, and bridge the human/ technology gap. The following two summers I got a job in NYC as a programmer with clearance to work on a variety of large capacity computers as a programmer and operator.

Back on campus, Dr. Brackett again made me a suggestion.

Colgate was going to open

the computer lab to students.

Was I interested in becoming a nighttime operator and tutor? I jumped at the chance.

Looking at Colgate Magazine’s graph of computer majors, I noticed only 11 in 1998. I chuckled at our efforts more than 30 years before. Back then, most nights in the computer room a few students would come in, but many nights I didn’t even turn on more than the lights.

Later in life, I got my PhD in psychology, building on my Yin/Yang skills that I called ‘high tech and high touch.’ It all started with Dr. Brackett’s vision for how computers would change the world.

William S. Beery ’69 My memories are of having my eyes opened to this brandnew world that was previously very intimidating to me, based solely on my limited experience with punch card programming in high school.

I came to Colgate interested in math and science, thinking pre-med. I knew intuitively that computer programming fluency was essential, regardless of my path. So I took Comp Sci 101, like a child taking his medicine. Turns out, it didn’t taste so bad. As a sophomore, I signed up for the two-semester intro sequence (for majors) taught by Dr. Brackett. Unsure of my major at that point, he kind of ‘recruited’ me into the department, which was nice

because I had no other suitors. I have very fond memories of the collaborative spirit of my fellow majors (including Ed Felt ’81, a great teacher and calm presence, who tragically died on 9/11). We saw a lot of each other in the basement of the Coop. I loved the problem solving, creativity, and new areas of mathematics.

Dr. Brackett helped me get my first ‘real world’ summer job at Pfizer in NYC. For the last 10 years, I’ve been a trustee of the Brackett Refugee Education Fund, working with Tom and Liz’s entire family. Very inspiring people!

Mark Sommer ’82 In my senior year, I took an independent study semester with physics professor Charlie Holbrow. The school had recently acquired a DEC PDP-10 time sharing computer. One of the programs (OK, games) available was Lunar Lander, where you were given an initial altitude, velocity, gravitation constant, and fuel amount. You had to land by firing your retro rockets and slow to a safe speed at touchdown. Burn your fuel too early, you’d run out, free fall, and crash; wait too long and you couldn’t slow enough and again you’d crash.

After learning to play the game, my assignment was to figure out the formula to safely land using the least possible amount of fuel, then code this into a BASIC program. I got hooked and eventually landed in an IT career.

Jeff Swallen ’73

Sugar Rush Great story (“Finding Her Sweet Spot,” summer 2021, p. 110)! I am incredibly happy Erica [Pais ’17] was able to find something she loves and spread knowledge to others through a unique design.

Diana Dimas ’20

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

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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Voices rofessor Peter Balakian has centered his new release, No Sign (University of Chicago Press, 2022), around a multi-sectional long poem — the kind that defined his last book, Ozone Journal, which won the 2016 Pulizer Prize for Poetry.

The titular poem is the third segment following the previously published “A-Train/Ziggurat/Elegy” (Ziggurat, 2010) and “Ozone Journal” (Ozone Journal, 2015).

“All chart the evolution of one character or persona whose experiences evolve from the mid-1970s to the present in and around New York City,” explains the Donald M. and Constance H. Rebar Professor in humanities, professor of English, and director of creative writing.

In a nonlinear form, the poem “No Sign” takes readers through time and place, addressing topics such as the future of the planet, the tragedy of Hiroshima at the start of the nuclear age, and the Vietnam War. “Poetry, in particular, has a great capacity to absorb history, and to make historical memory a dynamic contemporary force,” he told the New York Times.

The poem presented on p. 11, “History, Bitterness,” probes trauma, history, and memory, all wrapped around a moment Balakian had by phone with writer James Baldwin many years ago as Baldwin was dying.

Although Balakian’s poems focus on stark realities, “We always see daylight through the kitchen window near dusk,” as he writes in “No Sign.” Or, as one reviewer remarks: “Balakian is able to praise the world though he knows its ‘bitter history.’”

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Balakian, who has taught at Colgate since 1980, is the author of many books, including the New York Times best-seller The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response and the memoir Black Dog of Fate, winner of the PEN/Martha Albrand Prize.

books

Professor Peter Balakian’s poems move across time and place.

10 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

mark diorio

Kaleidoscopic Memory

History, Bitterness

A phone booth August/ Yaddo/ Saratoga Springs—air of the Tiffany parlor—sour scent of empty wine bottles,

What are degrees of separation? Private myths? Illusions?

My aunt the surrealist might call them chance meetings.

my friend handed me the sweating receiver: “Go ahead

say hello.”

What could I say to James Baldwin who was dying in the

south of France?

Do we invent proximities for our need, for salvation,

for love?

Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, names my uncle scrawled

No name in the street. Paris. Algiers. Little Rock, you can on a map of the dispossessed—on a wall in a hotel of cards where Dixieland horns played at a banquet for the Grande

fill it in . . .

I’m sitting at Les Deux Magots with my NY Yankees Armée

umbrella in my lap, and the next map of Europe was shuffled with an ace in

the hole. a wide glass of wine from some vineyard of Burgundy in Miles Davis spent seven hours with Louis Malle making

my hand, some recalling that Baldwin sat here drinking scotch all day

and writing languid, piercing, hollow sliding sounds in the indeterminate dank night; as friends dropped by. And it hits me: just over Pont de no name on the street stalked him. A few years later

Sully my great uncle Baldwin moved just miles sat in a big treaty room in 1919 representing Armenia (did

it exist?) in a fancy from where my father was born in Istanbul—a few years

after the Armenians hotel with others who hoped for a nation in return for were expunged from Turkey and my grandparents left the

the slaughter.

ghost map Baldwin knew Sartre and de Beauvoir, he saw Camus

pass by. on the wall. It was 1919 and the flu blew along Saint-

Germain where It was 1958 and the Algerian cabby who dropped him my grandparents met my uncle that fall. I knew Baldwin’s

off drunk

heart went hollow, on the curb was half-blind from the revolution.

Bang bang bang goes the heart. Mr. Baldwin was dying in a

sensual village in the south of France. After a week at Versailles my uncle

came to that hotel room

languid, and sizzled with the need to get out of America; it

even led him to the place my grandparents fled—before they landed a

couple miles from Baldwin’s

apartment in Harlem.

where in the closet of his head a big white sheet floated Are these degrees of separation? Or just my way of thinking

over the Black Sea. about that strange What did rape and massacre mean? Fail-proof, shattered, moment in a phone booth at an artists’ colony in the bitten-off

summer of ’86? words that floated over the bridge into the carnival horns My friend said: “If you love Jimmy’s work, I know he’d love

of night. to hear A few months earlier Miles Davis passed Baldwin at Les from you. All good news means a lot, especially at the end.”

Deux Magots on his way to play for Louis Malle’s Ascenseur pour What could I say to Mr. Baldwin? He’d helped me

understand the bitter l’échafaud history that had trapped me—that was trapped in me. the spurting air of love love love slipping from the valves— the spit and breath of night in Paris off the torpid brown Seine where Paul Celan had disappeared not long before.

Hiss hiss hiss goes the heart. It’s 1958 and Camus still walks the boulevard—the war in Algeria is daily acid in the river.

Istanbul, New York, Paris. No name. No street.

I was sweating into the phone. Mr. Baldwin’s voice was frail

but unmistakable.

Winter 2022

Colgate Magazine

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SCENE Anniversary

COVE Celebrates 20 Years of Service

L

ooking back at 20 years since the founding of the Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education (COVE), co-founder Betsy Levine-Brown ’01 reflects: “I realize it grounded my beliefs in key elements of humanity; part of our role in the world is giving back.”

Levine-Brown, Jenny (Buntman) ’03 Indig, and Adrienne (LaGier) ’01 Forgette co-founded the COVE in 2001 based on Volunteer Colgate, an umbrella organization that oversaw more than 40 student groups. The three students, who were members of Volunteer Colgate’s executive board, recognized the need for a stand-alone center that would coordinate campus efforts. They drafted a proposal for a new community service center for their senior thesis, “A Strategic Plan for Student Community Outreach Activities.”

The plan outlined six detailed reasons for a new community outreach center. In their reasons, they noted the benefits of service learning: openmindedness, reduced negative stereotypes due to increased interactions with a variety of people, personal development, increased faculty-student connections, and an opportunity for students to apply their

course knowledge in real-life scenarios. Lastly, they cited other northeastern liberal arts schools with service centers, such as Middlebury.

The University decided, based on the students’ proposal, to dedicate an office in East Hall to this new initiative. In 2013, its headquarters relocated into the first floor of Lathrop Hall, and it was renamed the Max A. Shacknai COVE, in memory of the son of Jonah Shacknai ’78.

Today, the COVE continues to encourage students to engage in good citizenship, locally and globally. “The Max A. Shacknai Center for Outreach, Volunteerism, and Education fosters a commitment to social responsibility and

12 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

engagement through mutually beneficial, community-centered partnerships,” reads the mission statement.

Some current student activities include service learning immersive trips, mentoring local youth, visiting senior care facilities, hunger outreach, nonpartisan voter efforts, and volunteering at animal shelters.

“Colgate is an anchor institution; the University succeeds when the Village of Hamilton succeeds,” says COVE Director Jeremy Wattles ’05. “I hope I can be a helpful part of institutionalized community work and progress on campus.”

Meanwhile, the three cofounders are now professionally

involved in or associated with education, whether it be teaching, administration, or think-tank research with universities.

Forgette is the upper school head at the Hutchison School in Memphis, Tenn., where she empowers students to be active learners. “Through volunteering at Madison Group Home during

MLK Day of Service 2019

my time at Colgate, I was inspired to pursue teaching and education,” she says.

Levine-Brown works at George Mason University as an associate professor in the College of Education and Human Development. At

Students volunteered at Compassion Coalition in Utica in January 2020.

mark diorio

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

Colgate, she helped create the Levine-Weinberg Fellowship — with her father, Tom Levine ’71, and former Vice President and Dean of the College Adam Weinberg — which supports students interested in pursuing careers in community or public work with summer internship funding. She also was a member of the Alumni Council and received the Maroon Citation in 2020–21. “Civic engagement has positively affected the way I compose myself in my career and how I parent members of the next generation,” LevineBrown says.

Indig has spent the majority of her career in public service working for think tanks and serving local government. She is currently an angel investor supporting women- and BIPOCfounded organizations focused on sustainability or improving humanity and health outcomes.

She remembers the deeper sense of fellowship she felt with her peers at the COVE: “It was through social service and volunteering that I found the people I truly connected with.”

andrew daddio

2oth anniversary events This academic year, the COVE has planned a celebratory event each month, including dedicated days of service, an art contest, social media spotlights, and networking events.

On Colgate’s Charter Day (March 5), alumni clubs nationwide will participate in service activities in their respective cities. (For more information, visit @colgatecove on Instagram.)

In April, there will be a community barbecue on Whitnall Field as well as an anniversary dinner with COVE founders and current members to reflect on 20 years of service.

— Tess Dunkel ’24 Illustrations by Toby Triumph

13 bits 1 Massive stormwater storage chambers buried 8 feet below Spear House parking lot are part of a new drainage system that contributes to green infrastructure.

2 Three Class of 2021 alumni received The Richard L. Stone ’81 Civic Freedom Award and Scholarship, selected by the Center for Freedom and Western Civilization.

Chop It Up event

Student Life

Providing Encouragement and Resources for Men of Color

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o support and celebrate men of color on campus, Colgate launched a new program in the fall. Led

by Dean of Students Dorsey Spencer Jr., The Men of Color Success Network aims to foster inclusivity and improve the Colgate experience.

“The mission is to promote a sense of belonging and wellbeing, encourage co-curricular engagement, and provide an additional layer of support to enhance the success of undergraduate men of color at Colgate,” Spencer says.

The pilot program — housed within the Dean of the College division — has received backing from faculty and staff members across campus. “This is an opportunity to see, meet, and support each other — and to celebrate the presence [of men of color] on campus,” says Rodney Agnant ’14, assistant director of programming and lead facilitator of Chapel House.

Agnant led one of the first events, called Chop It Up, with

a talk on his personal Colgate experience. The gathering provided a barbershop atmosphere for club members, offering free haircuts, food, music, and fellowship. Chop It Up established an environment where attendees could share their experiences as well as learn about campus resources.

Agnant notes, “This was not part of my undergraduate experience.” Therefore, he says, he appreciates “the strong engagement of staff and faculty [members] to share resources with each other and with students.”

Other fall events for the network included a Career Services webinar about professional opportunities and a boxing class led by CJ Molina, assistant director of recreation programming.

Students have also traveled to Syracuse to visit the Salt City Market and Destiny USA mall.

In the spring, the group will visit New York City to see a play, and there will be another barbershop event focused on wellness and health, as well as a leadership symposium with alumni.

“In the future, we would like to add a pre-orientation program, a service-learning trip during spring break, a senior recognition event, and scholarships for various needs,” Spencer says.

3 Students built Lego bonsai trees as a meditative event at Chapel House in October.

4 The Broken Lizard boys are at it again with Quasi, a satirical take on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The film will be released exclusively on Hulu.

5 Colgate’s Director of Facilities Operations Jason Wallace has added another title to his roster: brigadier general. The United States Army Corps of Engineers, United States Army reserve officer received the promotion in July.

6 Caleb Levy ’23 won the Beth Brown Memorial Award for a presentation he gave at the National Society of Black Physicists conference.

— Tess Dunkel ’24 Winter 2022

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Astronomy

Haven, Colgate’s sexual violence resource center, celebrated its fifth anniversary on Oct. 28 in a ceremony honoring those who were instrumental to its creation.

9 Approximately 3,250 family members flocked to campus in the fall for the first family weekend since the pandemic hit.

10 Dr. Jerome Adams, former U.S. surgeon general, visited campus to discuss his work leading national and global health policy.

11 Travel from 1480 to 1984 with Special Collections and University Archives’ exhibit Creatures, Real and Imagined, featuring illustrations from the rare books collection.

12 Living Writers 2021 brought to campus authors such as: Ted Chiang, Omar El Akkad, and Valeria Luiselli.

13 Samantha Elliott ’97 was nominated by President Biden as a judge to the U.S. District Court of New Hampshire.

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asting almost three and a half hours, the longest partial eclipse in 580 years drew students to Foggy Bottom Observatory on Nov. 19, 2021.

At 4:26 a.m., astronomy-physics major Riley Corcoran ’22 — who organized the gathering — took this shot as the moon was just past its 98% totality.

Corcoran explains: “The bright white strip to the right shows the percentage that was not blocked by the Earth’s shadow. The rest of the moon appears red during a lunar eclipse because of the way sunlight bends through Earth’s atmosphere. No direct sunlight is reaching the moon during an eclipse, but the molecules within our atmosphere will bend and refract the red light within the sunlight hitting the edges of Earth tangentially so that the red light meets up again somewhere behind Earth, lighting the moon red when it is in Earth’s shadow.

More importantly, passing the sunlight through such a long tangential stretch of Earth’s atmosphere also helps filter out some of the other colors through the same scattering process; then only the red is left when the light exits the back of Earth to be bent toward the moon.”

This phenomenon similarly explains why sunsets and sunrises are red, she adds.

“Sunlight travels through a longer stretch of atmosphere when the sun is close to the horizon, allowing all of the higher energy colors (red is the lowest energy color) to be scattered off, leaving only red left in the sky.”

Corcoran has been gaining experience using the observatory telescope since last summer when she conducted

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research with Professor Tom Balonek. They received a NASA New York Space Grant to study quasars. In the fall, she worked as an assistant, opening the observatory on clear nights to allow Astronomy 101 students to use the telescope.

A few days before the eclipse, Corcoran saw that the forecast was predicted to be clear and sent out an invitation to students. “Word spread, and I ended up having at least 40 people come … some from the class, some from the Star ’Gate club, and others who came because they heard it was happening.”

She took the photo using her Google Pixel phone, lining it up with the eyepiece. “It’s very close to what it would look like through the telescope,”

Word spread, and I ended up having at least 40 people come … some from the class, some from the Star ’Gate club, and others who came because they heard it was happening.

Riley Corcoran ’22

Corcoran says. “The image represents about 30 arcminutes, or half a degree, of the sky.”

— Aleta Mayne

riley Corcoran ’22

8 Rev. Al Sharpton visited Colgate for a public interview with Professor Nina Moore, political science department chair and director of the Forum on Race and Public Policy.

Shooting for the Moon

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Student Voices

A Different Type of Education Noha Shahba ’24 reflects on her gap year.

ice veins.” That’s the first thing Noha Shahba ’24 said to her roommate when they met in the fall.

Having worked as a phlebotomist throughout the previous academic year, initially in New York City and then in her home state of Colorado, Shahba has an unusual comfort level with all things related to blood.

But that wasn’t always the case.

She’d decided, when campus shut down due to COVID-19 in spring 2020, that she would take time off from Colgate and dedicate herself to helping others as the world continued to struggle with the global health crisis. During that time working in hospitals — as the pandemic worsened — Shahba received a very different education.

The opportunity arose when Shahba’s rowing teammate, Alex Hopkins ’23, also decided to take a gap year and was planning to live in New York City, where her parents have an apartment.

Shahba, who has long been considering a career in health care, reached out to Jon Sendach

’98, executive director of North Shore University Hospital at Northwell Health. He helped her get an interview at Lenox Hill Hospital (owned by Northwell) on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Shahba underwent intense training at the hospital for three weeks, instead of the usual six. “With everything being so hectic, [my manager] needed me on the floor,” she says. Facing trial by fire, Shahba drew blood from 16–20 patients an hour, beginning at 5 a.m.

She alternated working full days in the COVID-19 unit with shifts on other floors. From PPE shortages to witnessing death regularly, Shahba endured a number of difficulties. “The first time I saw a patient die, I was not

mentally prepared for it,” she says.

“You don’t have an emotional connection to them, but it’s still hard. And when you do build emotional connections with some of them, it’s even harder.”

The tense environment strained Shahba and those around her; she encountered mistreatment by overworked coworkers and aggressive patients. “I had COVID patients spit on me,” she says. It’s no wonder that she and Hopkins both caught serious cases of the virus by Thanksgiving 2020. “It was scary dealing with COVID on our own.” It took six months for them to fully recover.

Beyond her own challenges, Shahba had a front-row seat to the inequities of the health

Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative

mark diorio

“Upon viewing a new scene, the brain takes about 300 milliseconds to transform the array of light that enters the eye into meaningful content that enables intelligent behavior. But the scene is more than just a static picture in the mind. The neural codes used to identify and define the scene are constantly evolving over an enormous, multidimensional population of neurons.”

— Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Bruce C. Hansen co-introduced a brain-mapping technique that offers insights into how the neural code of images of real-world environments undergoes dramatic transformations in a fraction of a second.

care system. “It’s insane how the resources are distributed,” she says. While the hospital where she worked dealt with the same shortages as everyone else, other hospitals where friends worked didn’t even have basics like Band-Aids because of funding. And within the hospital where Shahba worked, she heard COVID-19 patients say they’d rather die than go into debt paying for a ventilator.

After nine months and 3,584 patients, Shahba needed a change from New York City. “There was no nature, and that really took a toll on my mental health, because my stress relief is hiking and being outside.” She moved home to Colorado and accepted a lead phlebotomist position.

For two months, Shahba worked 75 hours a week and sometimes overnights, but the comfort of being near her family and the mountains helped.

“I was very much ready to come back to Colgate by the end of it,” Shahba says. The stressors she recalls from her first year as a college student now seem insignificant.

“I have a better appreciation for life,” says Shahba, who is still considering a career in health care. “It made me more grateful. And not many people are given the privilege of having an experience that helps them grow so quickly.”

— Aleta Mayne

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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Q&A

Kat Yen ’09 Returns to Campus with The Juniors

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uring Kat Yen’s first year at Colgate, she found her “theater parents.”

Professor April Sweeney, Professor Adrian Giurgea, and Senior Lecturer Simona Giurgea had also just arrived on campus, and Yen credits their care and teaching wisdom with her success today. “Without them, I would’ve never discovered this thing I’ve dedicated my life to.”

Now a New York City-based theater director, Yen returned to Colgate to direct the fall campus production The Juniors, written by her Yale School of Drama classmate Noah Diaz. The story of high school juniors undertaking a “flour sack baby” project in their home economics class, the play examines the struggles of parenting and coming of age through satire and comedy. Learn more about Yen and her work on The Juniors.

Why did you decide to bring The Juniors to Colgate?

In my first year of graduate school, I made really good friends with the playwright.

This was the first play he wrote there and I’ve been obsessed with it since then. It’s been such a wonderful experience getting to direct this production five years later — it feels like a dream come true.

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Why did you pursue a career in theater?

I was actually homeless before I came to Colgate; I was literally applying while I was living in Central Park. My cousin, Doris Yen ’08, was a year above me, so I knew about it. I was in a really messed-up life situation and thought, ‘I know of the school, I know someone there, let’s apply.’

My cousin at that point was the University Theater stage manager and invited me to be her assistant. I instantly became hooked, partially because theater has a very particular type of community and I was coming from a place where I didn’t have any friends or family. I remember listening to the stories that were being told The Juniors cast members Florence Almquist Checa ’22 and Jorge Rochet ’25

in a rehearsal room as I was sweeping the floor, seeing how people were relating to each other, and thinking ‘This is it for me.’

How would you describe your directorial style?

The type of work I’m really interested in, I would very lightly define as magic realism.

In theater and literature, that’s almost becoming an old-fashioned term, but I still think it best describes what I do, which is plays that are based in reality. We have real human relationships or traumas, or histories, or whatever else, but we elevate from that and explore them across time and space in a more abstracted way.

The Juniors works in a very similar way, starting in this sort of reality: these actual teenagers in high school who have real relationships with each other and with the teacher, start forming deep relationships with their flour sack babies. And then, very quickly, this investment in the flour sack babies spirals into violence and chaos.

I really love this description I’ve heard around campus of the show: ‘It felt like a fever dream.’

— Rebecca Docter Yen will direct Marisol by Jose Rivera at the University of Rochester this spring.

mark diorio

What was it like working with students at your alma mater?

I absolutely loved working with these students. When you’re working with young adults who are learning how to do a lot of this for the first time, or having these special experiences for the first time, it’s really inspirational. It allows me to enjoy what I do more because I see their excitement and joy. For example, the first day they learned fight choreography, several members of the cast expressed that it was the coolest thing they’ve ever done. That kind of enthusiasm is just so infectious.

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Remembrance

Men’s Soccer Honors Players Killed on 9/11

O Art

To the Beat of His Own Drum Performance architect exhibits synchronized sculpture in Clifford Gallery

mark williams

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n a darkened Clifford Gallery, red and blue lights illuminated a large-scale form made of silver nylon and faux fur. Powered by electronics for mobility and accompanied by techno-style audio, the inflatable sculpture embodied a haunting figure. Blown air allowed for the piece to take ambiguous shapes, yet it was carefully constructed to move through precisely timed compositions.

The Sound and The Future, on display in September and October, was the Clifford Gallery’s first exhibition of the academic year. It was created

by Alex Schweder, an American performance architect who specializes in large-scale abstract sculptures in nontraditional mediums.

“This architectural robot, commissioned by Detroitbased Wasserman Projects, engorges and disgorges with air to move at Butoh-like speed to continually reconfigure the spaces available to dance within,” says Schweder, referencing Japanese dance theater.

The exhibition was meant to examine significant spaces and nostalgic atmospheres with which many young adults are

familiar. “The ambience might be familiar to [Colgate students] from a dance or club context, but not in a gallery,” explains exhibition organizer DeWitt Godfrey, who is the Peter L. and Maria T. Kellner Endowed Chair in the arts, creativity, and innovation. “The lighting, sound, and movement created an immersive experience.”

The evocative piece challenges the expectations of museumgoers as they step into the gallery space. A majority of Schweder’s performance architecture pieces defy traditional limitations of artistic architecture, and they provide a perspective-based analysis of the amorphous work. The negative space and optical composition continually change based on the viewer’s posture and positioning in relation to the sculpture.

“I am interested in the ways that Alex’s work expands the boundaries of architecture and its relation to artistic practices,” Godfrey says. “[It is] very useful as we consider the future of architectural studies and the Middle Campus Initiative for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation.”

— Tess Dunkel ’24

n the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Sept.

11, men’s soccer alumni gathered to dedicate three team lockers to the memory of former players who died.

“I want to thank all of the alumni and friends of the Colgate men’s soccer program for your commitment to being here to honor the lives of our fallen brothers: Todd Pelino ’89, David Retik ’90, and Scott Coleman ’94,” said Erik Ronning ’97, John W. Beyer Head Coach of men’s soccer.

The team decided to raise $130,000 for the men’s soccer program that was, and continues to be, such a strong source of camaraderie. The goal was set, and through the leadership of Pete Sheinbaum ’92, Tom Murphy ’90, and David Cappillo ’94, it was met through gifts and commitments. The University marked their collective achievement with the dedication of lockers for Pelino, Retik, and Coleman — lockers that will be assigned each year by the coaching staff to players who embody the spirit and tradition of Colgate men’s soccer.

“The dedication of these three lockers will serve as a lasting and permanent tribute to these three beloved members of the program,” Ronning said. “We will always remember.”

Keeping memories alive on 9/11/21, teammates and family members shared stories and emotions. Pelino was remembered as the Def Leppard fan, the defender who had your back. Retik was the one recruited away from Cornell, who found family on the team and then built one of his own with the wife he met at Colgate, Susan (Zalesne) ’90 Retik-Ger. Coleman was the magnetic personality, a man of many friendships.

“Sometimes Sept. 11, 2001, feels like a very long time ago; sometimes it feels like yesterday,” Sheinbaum said. “But what is most important is that we all continue to remember. This day is special to me because all of you have come together to share it with your Colgate community and the families of Todd, David, and Scott.”

— Mark Walden

The University dedicated lockers to (L to R): Scott Coleman ’94, Todd Pelino ’89, and David Retik ’90. Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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Volleyball

Patriot League Champions

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The team continued to the first round of the NCAA tournament, where they were beat by No. 4 Wisconsin.

Still, the Raiders proved they could hang tough with the Big Ten champions as they competed in front of a sellout crowd of more than 7,000 spectators at the UW Field House.

— Jordan Doroshenko Olivia Hokanson

he Colgate volleyball team became Patriot League champions when they defeated American University (which has won the conference championship 16 times in the last 20 years). This is the first title for the Raiders since 2012. The championship is Colgate’s sixth all-time and the second for Coach Ryan Baker.

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Colgate Crushes ’Cuse For the first time in 59 years, the Raiders beat the Orange, 100–85 on Nov. 20. Colgate men’s basketball blitzed Syracuse’s zone defense with 18 made 3-pointers and rocked the dome for their first win over the Orange since 1962.

Alumni News

Burns ’21 Signs With Spurs

Rich Barnes (top)

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San Antonio native, Jordan Burns ’21 has begun his professional career with his hometown organization. He signed an Exhibit 10 contract with the San Antonio Spurs and has been assigned to the Austin Spurs of the NBA G League.

“This means the world to me, honestly,” Burns says. “This is a team that I was always a fan of as a kid and wanted to play for.

My family loves the fact that I’m able to stay home, and they can come to games.”

An Exhibit 10 contract is a one-year, standard minimum undrafted free-agent NBA contract. The team will control Burns’ G League rights, and he is eligible for a bonus if he spends at least 60 days with the G League affiliate.

It was with the help of a former Colgate men’s basketball player that Burns scored this opportunity. Burns’ agent, Daniel Green ’06, is the founder and CEO of Green Sports Management. He holds more

than 10 years of experience in professional sports and is a certified agent with the National Basketball Players Association, the Federation International Basketball Association, and the NCAA. “Daniel continued to support me throughout my Colgate career,” Burns says. “Having an agent who went to Colgate, has been through similar experiences on the campus, and played in the same gym, we had a lot of things in common before we even said ‘hello.’ It’s a blessing.”

Burns capped his prolific Colgate career as the Patriot League Player of the Year in 2021. He is the only player in program history to rank in the top 10 in scoring, assists, and steals. And he is one of four players in Patriot League history to be named the tournament MVP twice in a career (2018–19, 2020–21).

A three-time All-Patriot League pick, Burns helped guide Colgate to two NCAA tournament appearances, two regular season championships, back-to-back 20-win campaigns, and a program-record 25 wins in 2019–20.

— Jordan Doroshenko

Jordan Burns ’21

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Career Services

Boosting Students’ PostGraduate Success

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Teresa Olsen

ichael ’78 and Julie Milone have committed $1.5 million to permanently endow the directorship of Career Services, supporting efforts to help students explore their passions and pursue post-graduation success.

“We feel strongly that career services is a very important part to the successful college experience,” says Michael, who earned his degree in the natural sciences before pursuing a 32-year career with H.J. Heinz, retiring as executive vice president of emerging markets and head of global enterprise risk management. “Career services should start early to help students experience as many things as they can to figure out their interests and passions.”

A longtime advocate for Colgate Career Services, Michael previously invested in the construction of its home in Benton Hall. “I

was a biochemist who went into consumer products marketing, so you never can tell,” says Michael. “What’s indispensable about a liberal arts degree is that it helps you develop thinking skills that are an important part of success, regardless of what a student chooses to do in the future.”

The creation of endowed directorships will assist the University in attracting and retaining transformational leaders as Colgate pursues its Third-Century Plan. A 15-year veteran of the department, Teresa Olsen will be the first beneficiary to take the title of the Milone Family Assistant Vice President for Career Initiatives.

Under Olsen’s leadership, Career Services recently adopted a new, intentional framework to empower undergraduates’ strategic career exploration. Engagement with this model throughout their four years will help students translate a liberal arts education into a lifetime of meaningful work.

“We don’t expect students to have all the answers,” Olsen says. “We are focused on helping them build the foundation that lets them explore who they are while connecting the dots between their academic and cococurricular interests.”

BY THE NUMBERS → Since 2013, Career Services has offered more than $4.2 million in donor-funded grants for students to pursue unpaid or underpaid summer internship, research, or service experiences. → The department engages more than 1,300 alumni and parent volunteers annually to support career development programs and events.

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→ Career Services’ employer relations proactively secures internship and entry-level opportunities from 200 formal recruiting partners annually. → 98% of the Class of 2021 engaged with Career Services, taking advantage of coaching, programming, and networking opportunities.

→ Even amid a global pandemic, 94% of respondents in the Class of 2020 had secured employment, graduate or professional school admission, a competitive fellowship or scholarship, volunteer service, or military service within six to nine months after graduation.

Illustrations by Anje Jager

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student support

Expressing Gratitude With Opportunity

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s a high school senior in the spring of 1990, Giovanni Cutaia ’94 met his mom in the driveway, where she handed him a stack of mail. In it was a letter from Colgate University.

“My first thought was, ‘Is it thin or thick?” recalls Cutaia. “It felt like multiple pages, which could be a good sign, but I didn’t know.”

Opening the envelope, one line leapt off the first page, “Congratulations on your admission to Colgate!” But before Cutaia allowed himself to celebrate, one question lingered: “Could I afford it?” Turning the page, he carefully reviewed the University’s financial aid package, and with each line, Cutaia felt one step closer to Hamilton, N.Y. “I was only able to attend because of the generosity Colgate and previous alumni have shown,” says Cutaia, a first-generation college student. “From the day I stepped on campus, I’ve felt a sense of gratitude for that opportunity.”

Now a member of the University’s Board of Trustees and the global head of real estate asset management at Blackstone, Cutaia and his wife, Maree, are committed to underscoring that truth through action.

Last fall, the University announced a $2.5 million gift from the Cutaias to endow the directorship of First@Colgate, a program designed to help first-generation students thrive at the University. In addition to advising and support, First@Colgate promotes leadership and formal mentoring, connects students to available research and internship opportunities, and helps build community by hosting social events that include dinners, study groups, and game nights.

Inaugural director RaJhai Spencer has played an integral role in developing First@ Colgate’s pre-orientation and academic-year programming.

“We want to create a sense of belonging by exposing students to as many resources as possible,” says Spencer, who is herself a first-generation college graduate of Duke University.

RaJhai Spencer

“We want to create a sense of belonging by exposing [first-generation] students to as many resources as possible.”

“We want to help make introductions to faculty, staff, and their peers early so they can live out their dreams and thrive on this campus and beyond.”

The Cutaias also paved the way for the President’s DEI Discretionary Fund in 2020, which supports programs that help students of color and students with limited financial means pursue summer internships and applications for graduate school or national fellowships. Funds have also been used to help the ALANA Cultural Center support student-developed efforts and programming across campus.

“It’s not just about admitting a diverse student body,” says Cutaia. “When students arrive at Colgate, we have an obligation to celebrate their contributions to our community and make sure they have access to everything the University has to offer, putting them in a position to be successful.”

Believing that the most robust learning environment requires a diverse set of views and experiences, the Cutaias see their philanthropic efforts as simply an extension of the University’s own commitment to expanding access and opportunity.

As part of the Third-Century Plan, Colgate strives to attract and support outstanding students from diverse backgrounds. Hoping

to continue to enroll talented students like Cutaia, who may not have considered Colgate were it not for its much-needed financial aid offer, the University launched the Colgate Commitment in 2020. The new policy expands access by reducing or eliminating students’ tuition based on family income level.

Colgate has also entered into new recruiting partnerships with organizations like QuestBridge, expanding its pool of diverse, qualified applicants for whom the University is the best form of higher education. Once on campus, these students encounter programming and staffing that has been enhanced — in part through the Cutaias’ generosity — to ensure that they can take the utmost advantage of their Colgate experience, whether in residences or classrooms, on-campus activities, or offcampus study opportunities.

“A lot of people’s experiences are limited by their resources,” says Cutaia.

“When we remove those hurdles, we’re able to attract the most talented people, and that’s how you create a community where we have a collection of the best minds that can really challenge and push one another.”

Winter 2022

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Coeducation

Celebrating a Milestone

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alumnae back to campus Nov. 12–13. A part of a yearlong celebration, the weekend’s events included panels, discussions, and sessions that proudly acknowledged the contributions of the institution’s first alumnae while also exploring the role women will continue to have in shaping and preparing the University for its third century.

“We couldn’t celebrate on campus last year, and [we] had a series of wonderful, monthly virtual events,” says Liz Buchbinder ’77, chair of the Women’s C E L E B R A T I O N Leadership Council.

“But we really felt like OF WOMEN AT C O LG AT E YEARS this was a milestone we needed to celebrate on campus, in person.”

Alumni were invited to sit in on Friday morning classes to kick off the celebration.

Afterward, faculty members hosted a panel to discuss a range of topics, which included the role of faculty-student collaboration in building understanding; the revised core curriculum; sustainability; and these experiences fueled my courage, my diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The faculty panel discussion helped set confidence, and my identity.” up the afternoon’s events, which included While uniquely hers, Hayling Price’s interactive tours related to Colgate’s Thirdstory was just one of countless others Century Plan. During the presentations, shared as the University welcomed

22 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

alumni had the option to learn more about the future of residential life; the expansion of Olin Hall to accommodate the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative; the renovation of Reid Athletic Center; or the revitalization of the Middle Campus.

“Having reached the 50-year milestone of coeducation, it’s important to celebrate where we’ve been and what we’ve come through,” says Buchbinder. “But, with the Third-Century Plan in the works, being able to look forward to what the future looks like for coeducation at Colgate has been really inspiring.”

Conversations about the University’s future continued the following morning with a discussion with President Brian W. Casey, moderated by best-selling author and reporter Lee (McConaughy) ’82 Woodruff H’07, P’13. Attendees then broke out into panels centered on women’s empowerment, working toward social justice, and inspiring change in the community.

“The great thing about the women at Colgate is that they are fierce, diverse, and passionate,” says Kathryn Chamberlain ’01 Roberts, who helped plan the celebrations throughout the past year. “Although we’ve all had different experiences here, those lessons and stories are important to share.”

The monthlong coeducation celebration was cosponsored by the Women’s Leadership Council (WLC). Established in 2005, the WLC inspires philanthropy among Colgate women who want to make a transformational impact for current and future generations of students.

Bryan Bennet

n a snowy Sunday night during her senior year, Patricia Hayling ’76 Price received a call from then-president Thomas Bartlett. He wanted her to apply for a Watson Fellowship, but the application needed to be postmarked by the following day.

Racing to meet Bartlett, she picked up the application and spent the evening filling it out. And as quickly as the opportunity to apply materialized, Hayling Price found herself studying intercultural dance choreography in London.

“It boosted my confidence,” Hayling Price recalled during her keynote speech at the 50th anniversary of coeducation dinner in November 2021. After graduation, she pursued a successful career as an actress and a model before serving as an IBM global executive for more than two decades. Hayling Price’s passion for business strategy and professional development later inspired her to launch her consultancy, LiveWorkStrategize, in 2006.

“Coursework fueled my intellect, but

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Seven Oaks Is Undergoing Improvements

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ith its sweeping views and challenging holes, Colgate’s Seven Oaks Golf Course has consistently earned national acclaim. As the list of repairs and maintenance grows with each passing year, the University developed a plan to ensure that the awardwinning course continues to be recognized as one of the nation’s finest collegiate venues.

Thanks to a lead gift from Brion ’76 and Sabrina Applegate, and substantial contributions from Joe ’85 and Christine (Walter) ’84 McGrath P’15,’20; Thomas

McInerney ’78, P’12; and Alan ’63 and Jean Heuer P’91,’99, more than $8.3 million was raised for the fully donor-funded project, allowing for renovations to begin last August.

In addition to creating a new short-game facility, planned course improvements include an elevated first green to provide a better playing surface and more pin placement, a rebuilt second green, renovated bunkers, new tees for various holes, new chipping and putting areas, and landscaping upgrades with new trees.

Seven Oaks’ renovations also include necessary upgrades to the clubhouse, such as new locker rooms, pro shop and lobby, and second-floor gathering space; an enlarged bar area; increased outdoor seating; and a relocated cart barn, equipped with infrastructure

that will allow for the use of electric carts.

“The renovations enhance a place on campus that is revered by the Colgate community and the Village of Hamilton,” says head golf coach Keith Tyburski.

“Modernizing some of the forced carries, through the addition of length and strategic placement of bunkering, will give Seven Oaks the look and the playability consistent with the top courses anywhere, and we look forward to showcasing it as our host facility on a national stage.”

Seven Oaks renovations are expected to be completed in spring 2022. They will allow the course to attract marquee tournaments, draw top golfers from around the country, and host public and private events.

With its enhanced athletics and dining facilities, a renewed Seven Oaks is well positioned to

continue its legacy as one of the country’s top collegiate courses, benefiting Colgate’s NCAA Division I golf team, casual weekend golfers, and community members alike.

“In keeping with the University’s Third-Century Plan, we aspire to attract the best students, faculty, and staff,” says J.S. Hope ’97, senior vice president for finance and administration and chief investment officer.

“Seven Oaks’ renovation not only aligns with the plan’s commitment to enriching the student experience, ensuring the success of our studentathletes, and stewarding the campus environs, but also restores a prized piece of our campus and provides a state-of-the-art facility for our University and local community to enjoy.”

Rendering: C&H Architects

Renovations

— All articles in this section are by Ben Badua

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museums

The Great Art Debate On the question of where art and archaeology belong, Professor Elizabeth Marlowe explores all possibilities.

collection of statues and carvings from the ancient Greek Acropolis have been displayed at the British Museum for nearly two centuries, despite demands from Greece for the artworks to be returned. The pieces have come to be called the Elgin Marbles, named for the British ambassador who sold them to the museum. A panel of experts, including art and art history professor Elizabeth Marlowe, debated the issue at the Boston Athenaeum on Oct. 7, 2021.

When the museum approached Marlowe to participate in the forum, it offered her the opportunity to argue for the Greek side

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(returning the marbles) or the British side (keeping the marbles in the UK). Because she teaches both sides of the argument in her classes, she said she’d do either. To Marlowe’s slight dismay, the museum asked her to present the less popular stance, fighting for the British. But, ultimately, she was grateful that it pushed her to think harder about the issue.

In searching for an argument to leave the marbles in the British Museum, Marlowe grappled with the bigger questions around Western museums built on colonial pillaging.

“If we care about decolonizing, if we care about righting the wrongs of the past,

Other panelists at the debate included former Massachusetts governors Michael Dukakis and Joseph Hern.

paul hudson

Discover

it’s not the Elgin Marbles that are the most egregious examples of abuses of power in the British Museum,” says Marlowe, the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Chair in liberal arts studies. Returning the Elgin Marbles before returning objects stolen from African or Asian countries would only send the message that pillaging from white European nations is worse than taking things from formerly colonized countries.

In the debate, Marlowe pointed to the Benin Bronzes, a vast collection of ivory statues, wooden heads, and brass sculptures that were looted from the Kingdom of Benin at the end of the 19th century in a bloody conquest. The Nigerian government has been requesting the return of the artifacts for decades, but the British Museum has refused.

For Marlowe, the question of whether the Elgin Marbles should be sent back to Greece is moot until the British Museum creates a plan to return items stolen during the colonial period. It’s a process many European museums are already undertaking. Belgium has promised to return at least 2,000 works to the Democratic Republic of Congo. France also recently approved the return of 27 heritage objects to Benin and Senegal.

“We may be at a turning point right now,” Marlowe says. “It’s possible that the British Museum might not be able to keep its head in the sand for much longer.”

In addition to considering the ethical implications of returning different objects, Marlowe thinks it’s also worth looking at aesthetic decisions about how objects are displayed. At the Boston Athenaeum event, those arguing in favor of returning the Elgin Marbles to Greece repeatedly noted that it would be better for the full collection to appear at the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

But Marlowe thinks there’s a benefit to seeing historic artworks in a variety of settings, whether it’s a collection of Greek art from throughout history, or some of the Elgin Marbles set alongside Aztec art in Mexico City.

“One argument for having them in two different museums is precisely the fact that those are two different ways of encountering the objects, and there’s value in that diversity,” Marlowe says.

But whether the public agrees is another question. At the end of the night in Boston, the majority of the audience had sided with the Greek opinion.

— Lorraine Boissoneault

Geology

The Fossils That Have No Bones NASA planetary scientist Liz Rampe ’05 studies minerals on Earth that provide insights into Mars.

his summer, Liz Rampe ’05 kept to a schedule. Most mornings, in the shadow of an Icelandic glacier, she scooped sediment at the shores of Sandvatn, an otherworldly lake. For more sample collection, she hiked with colleagues to rivers far from any paved road. But whenever the SUV would pull up to her site, it was time for a break.

She’d climb in the vehicle, dig out her bag of supplies, and pump breastmilk. Rampe’s 5-month-old daughter, Wren, was staying with grandparents a one-hour drive away.

Mom’s fieldwork would have to wait.

Rampe is a planetary scientist at NASA, and the fieldwork she conducted in that remote corner of Earth has implications for research on Mars. Billions of years ago, Mars may have had rivers and lakes like Earth. It could have looked like Iceland does today.

“The big-picture question we’re trying to answer is getting a better idea of what Mars was like three and a half billion years ago, and if it would have been habitable” by microbes or other simple life forms, she says. “We’re studying that through minerals on Earth that are in similar environments to what we think was on Mars.”

The red planet wasn’t always Rampe’s passion. She used to be more of a dinosaur fanatic. “I was always a science-y kid,” she says. Environmental scientist John Rampe ’75 and archaeologist Mary Barger encouraged their daughter’s interests, taking

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NASA

The big-picture question we’re trying to answer is getting a better idea of what Mars was like three and a half billion years ago.

Rampe measures a Marsanalog sample in the laboratory version of the CheMin instrument on the Curiosity rover.

her to see fossil dino footprints a short drive from their Denver, Colo., home. By the time she was ready to follow in her dad’s footsteps at Colgate, she thought she’d set aside childhood interests and major in chemistry.

But the Dinosaurs to Darwin course with Professor Connie Soja lured Rampe to geology. In addition, Professor Richard April and senior lecturer Di Keller taught Rampe how to use two specialized X-ray instruments to analyze clay minerals from soils in the Adirondack Mountains. When Rampe began graduate school at Arizona State University, a faculty member noticed her expertise from her Colgate studies. He made an intriguing offer: How would you like to study clay minerals — but from Mars?

“I knew nothing about Mars,” Rampe remembers, but she said yes and hasn’t looked back. Minerals can reveal a lot about a planet’s past. They’re fossils without bones, records of ancient climate and water conditions rather than a dinosaur’s ancient anatomy. A mineral’s composition can imply that it formed under warm and wet conditions, or cold and icy ones, or at a particularly salty seashore.

While still in grad school, Rampe landed a three-year fellowship to conduct research for a few months out of the year at NASA’s Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The center is the famed hub of astronaut training, but it also hosts extensive

scientific research. Thus began Rampe’s long-standing relationship with the Johnson Space Center. As of 2017, she is the deputy principal investigator for the Chemistry and Mineralogy instrument on NASA’s Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since 2012. She and her colleagues tell the instrument what to do and analyze its data.

The instrument, called CheMin for short, contains miniature versions of the same two instruments Rampe used at Colgate. “It’s just full circle for me,” she says.

Rampe’s fieldwork in Iceland complements the work she does with Mars samples. Curiosity is studying lake samples, so the specimens from Sandvatn might help Rampe’s team better understand how subtle changes in water conditions affect mineral compositions. She and her colleagues conducted additional mineral studies along a river in Iceland to support a different NASA rover, Perseverance, which landed on Mars in 2021.

Rampe is excited to tell her daughter about her job someday. She has a lot of ground to cover. Ultimately, Rampe’s work is about understanding what makes planets good places for life to evolve and asking whether life emerged someplace other than Earth. That’s probably too much for the first lesson, she laughs. “I imagine we’ll start by looking up at the stars.”

— Carmen Drahl Winter 2022

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Molecular Biology

The Bookworm and the Parasite Library reading inspired John Jimah ’08 to fight malaria.

hen the border town of Bawku, Ghana, built its first library, young John Jimah ’08 became a regular visitor. Paging through donated encyclopedias, he lingered over entries about diseases. Malaria was especially familiar — he’d had it several times. When he was 10, he became ill enough to be hospitalized.

Inside that one-room library, Jimah set some goals: One, become a scientist. Two, improve human health.

He’s on track with those goals today. In January, Jimah joined Princeton University as a new faculty member. His lab will study proteins from parasites that cause malaria and other diseases. The world desperately needs effective malaria vaccines, and parasites are getting better at resisting drugs.

Understanding parasite proteins could lead

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to solutions for both of those problems.

The malaria parasite fascinates scientists because it has a complicated life cycle with many stages. The same could be said of Jimah’s life. As a scholarship student at one of Ghana’s elite high schools, he feared his future coursework in Ghana would be too science focused. “I was still interested in learning about the world … and Colgate offered that opportunity” by giving him a full scholarship, he says.

He’d never been to the United States before, and he’d never turned in schoolwork on a computer. Nevertheless, he thrived.

True to his wish to understand the world, Jimah studied abroad in Denmark and completed a research project about gender and economic policy. On Colgate’s campus, he gravitated toward the Cooley Science

Library, where the number of books overwhelmed him. “I didn’t know where to begin, but I knew I wanted to learn,” he says. A book on the library’s display shelf captivated him. Titled Nature’s Robots, the book was about proteins, and it sparked a burning curiosity that would propel Jimah to his next stage.

Once again, Jimah didn’t take the expected path. Instead of going straight to graduate school after Colgate, he worked as a lab technician for three years to gain real-world experience and financial independence. He then attended Washington University in St. Louis, where he earned his PhD by combining his fascination with proteins and his interest in diseases. Scientists knew that a parasite protein called CelTOS was important for two stages of malaria’s life cycle, but they didn’t know why. Jimah learned that CelTOS busts open cells’ protective membranes from the inside. The parasite needs to travel between humans and mosquitoes to reproduce, but it can’t do that if it’s trapped inside a human or mosquito cell.

Today, CelTOS is one of many proteins that scientists are evaluating as the possible basis for a malaria vaccine.

The CelTOS project spurred Jimah to study other proteins that alter cell membranes, both in disease-causing agents and healthy cells. He became a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where he learned state-of-the-art techniques to determine what an important family of membrane-altering proteins looks like and how its members function. It’s these types of proteins that Jimah will study at Princeton.

He already has funding to support his lab.

Jimah is one of the first cohorts of MOSAIC scholars, a competitive NIH program that helps scientists from diverse backgrounds to get labs up and running. This program doesn’t just give money; it offers peer support from fellow MOSAIC scholars and mentoring from a scientific society. That’s important for scientists like Jimah, who come from underrepresented groups. “I’ve had so many great mentors,” he says.

Jimah is now at the stage where he wants to give back. During the pandemic, he cofounded a virtual seminar series that brings eminent scientists from diverse backgrounds to network with NIH fellows.

He’s hoping to make a contribution that will improve the Bawku library he remembers so fondly. As he begins the next stage of his dynamic life, he’s set a new goal: “I hope I’ll be in a position to be a good mentor to others.”

— Carmen Drahl

André CHUNG

DISCOVER

DISCOVER

Data Science

Strength in Numbers To help their peers ask new questions and make statistics more accessible, two Colgate researchers formed the Data Science Collaboratory.

t started as a pie-in-the-sky idea, says Will Cipolli, assistant professor of mathematics and the only statistician on campus.

What if the other lone statisticians at small colleges and universities across New York state teamed up? They might not be able to field a department softball team, but at least they could build a community.

And, just as more data points create greater statistical power, the combined strengths of many quantitative researchers enables their peers to ask new and better research questions. That’s what happened when Cipolli’s idea became the Data Science Collaboratory at Colgate University.

The notion arose because Cipolli is frequently called on to collaborate with other faculty members on their quantitative research projects. By working in different fields, “I get to learn a lot, which I really love,” Cipolli says.

He had many conversations about the need for data analysis support with Joshua Finnell, head of research and instruction in the Colgate University Libraries. A data librarian, Finnell also helps faculty members discover, curate, analyze, preserve, and visualize data for their research projects. As he and Cipolli discussed the need for a more comprehensive approach to data literacy, the idea for a data analysis and collaboration network took shape.

They applied for, and received, a New Initiatives Grant from the Central New York Library Resources Council in 2018. With that funding, their project was off and running.

Finnell and Cipolli started building a website for the project and recruiting other data scientists from inside and outside Colgate. They call it the Data Science Collaboratory at Colgate University. (The term collaboratory was defined by computer scientist William Wulf as “a center without walls, in which researchers can perform research without regard to physical location … sharing data and computational resources and accessing information in digital libraries.”)

They recruited 10 faculty members from colleges and universities in the New

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Illustration by Matt Chinworth

York Six Liberal Arts Consortium. “All of our collaborators bring something unique,” Finnell says. By being part of the network, these researchers are available to consult and work with faculty in need of advanced data analysis or statistical modeling. “While I can help with many statistical techniques, even those beyond my expertise, we can connect researchers with experts in the methods they seek to use,” Cipolli says.

That’s already led him to some interesting new collaborations. For example, he recently worked with sociologists at King’s University College in Canada to analyze how the media has portrayed COVID-19 restrictions, using natural language processing of almost 700 articles. He and other Data Science Collaboratory members have published papers on racial bias, Arctic ecosystems, and boulders on Mars.

Several student collaborators have also been instrumental to the growth of the Collaboratory as both affiliates and through summer research opportunities.

Current student members are developing statistical applications for the Collaboratory this year.

They’re working on creating pointand-click applications that will live on the website and let users conduct their own statistical analyses. Apps for various statistical methodologies are already up on the website. “The applications make selecting, performing, and interpreting analyses more

accessible,” Cipolli says.

Chau Pham ’22 was one of the first students to work on the project. She says that even though the job was only supposed to be a few hours a week, she couldn’t tear herself away. “I have never felt that passionate about any project before,” Pham says. Chris Cherniakov ’24 is working on developing the apps further, using the template that Pham created. He echoes Pham’s passion for the project. “It’s honestly awesome that we can bring people from different backgrounds to work together and help each other,” Cherniakov says.

The Collaboratory has also become affiliated as a member of the Academic Data Science Alliance, a community network of academic data science leaders, practitioners, and educators; and the Institute for the Quantitative Study of Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity, a research-into-action network applying mathematics, data science, and computation to social justice.

“The Collaboratory aims to be a place where data science is accessible to everyone,” Cipolli says, “and an integral part of developing the next generation of data scientists at Colgate University.”

One former Collaboratory member, Jake Scott ’20, went on to work at the Federal Reserve Board; another, Caio Brighenti ’20, is an analyst for the Detroit Lions; and Liam Emmart ’19 is now at the artificial intelligence company BlackBoiler.

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FA S H ION

In an industry that is notoriously cutthroat, five alumni found their way to the top, navigating the spaces of design, styling, and business to work at some of today’s most exciting brands — or, impressively, launch their own.

By Ariana Marsh

F O RWA R D

With her Diotima line, designer Rachel Scott ’06 (pictured below) has created collections that honor her Jamaican heritage. (Diotima photos by Joshua Kolb)

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“I

have this weird thing that I do in my life — when something crazy happens, I want to layer on more crazy things,” says designer Rachel Scott ’06, who launched her line, Diotima, during the pandemic, while also serving as the vice president of design at contemporary womenswear label Rachel Comey. “The pandemic gave me a moment of pause to think about where I’m going and what I want out of this career.”

Born and raised in Jamaica, Scott left her home country in 2002 to study art and art history and French

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joshua kolb

ISLAND STYLE

at Colgate, all the while planning to pursue a career in fashion design. One summer, she interned at Vogue and took classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology; another summer, she went to London and completed coursework at renowned fashion school Central Saint Martins. “I was always working toward the goal of being a designer,” Scott says.

After graduating from Colgate, Scott realized she needed a more formal foundation in fashion and enrolled in Milan’s famed Istituto Marangoni. While there, she interned — and later became an assistant — at Italian fashion house Costume National. “That was where I learned the most about design, the process, and construction,” recalls Scott.

Scott remained in Milan for four and a half years, at which point visa issues forced her to leave. After moving to New York at the behest of her longtime friend from Colgate, Shinae Lee ’06, she scored an interview at J. Mendel, where she worked as an assistant designer for a little under two years before becoming a designer at Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen’s line, Elizabeth and James, and, in 2015, a senior designer at Rachel Comey. “All of those places left imprints on how I’d like to work moving forward,” reflects Scott.

For her, that meant bringing her longtime dream of her own fashion brand, one that honored her native culture, to life. “I’ve always had this nagging idea that I couldn’t leave home and not contribute in some way,” says Scott, who tapped local Jamaican artisans to crochet doilies and other textiles to incorporate into Diotima. “It was a combination of wanting to preserve this knowledge of crocheting, which is very specialized, and also wanting to speak about Jamaica and the culture from the perspective of a Jamaican.”

To date, Scott has released two seasonal collections.

Both of them feature stunning crocheted creations: think a heart-shaped doily turned into a harness and a skirt featuring a dramatic crocheted ruffle down one side. They also showcase Scott’s take on tailoring inspired by her heritage. “In Jamaica, men used to dress in organza shirts with lace and these enormous drapey pants,” explains the designer. “It was a very unusual way of wearing tailoring that I thought was so cool. Older men in Jamaica still dress this way and I love it.”

Key pieces from her collections include a pleated khaki skirt inspired by the school uniforms Jamaican girls wear, a modernized take on the bush jacket that Scott says Jamaican politicians wore in the late ’70s and early ’80s, and a mesh merino shirt “that every single Jamaican owns if not one of, then multiple.”

Scott intends for her brand to not only emanate the people of Jamaica but also uplift them through job creation and the preservation of their traditional crafts.

“What I’m doing is so small, but I’m trying to find a better approach to production by starting from the beginning with labor,” she says. “I’m working with the women in Jamaica, I’m working with mills I’ve known for a long time, that I’ve visited, that I know how they operate.” She continues, “With places like the Caribbean or Africa or South America, ideas are always extracted and represented somewhere else. The product is never from there.” With Diotima, home is where the heart — and handwork — is.

WINDOW SHOPPING

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s a first-year studying political science at Colgate, Matthew Schiff ’05 was approached by Professor Yufan Hao, who taught his East Asian comparative politics class, about an opportunity that would ultimately dictate the trajectory of his career: participating in Hao’s study-abroad group to China. “There was something intriguing and compelling about traveling to China, just as it was starting to really open up on the global stage,” Schiff reflects. To prepare, he took an intensive Mandarin class that summer and another one at Colgate before going abroad in 2003.

Not long after arriving, the SARS outbreak caused the study-abroad program to end prematurely. Schiff returned to Colgate, where he finished out his degree, but he decided to return to China post-graduation, arriving in Shanghai in October 2005. “It was an incredibly interesting city to be in at that time, with a lot of expats and U.S. companies setting up big offices. China was doing, like it still is, so much of the manufacturing for U.S. brands.”

Through networking, Schiff scored a job in Shanghai working as the director of China operations for an import/export business that made home textiles (e.g., sheets and pillows) for an American company and later went on to accept a position at Li & Fung, which he calls “the Goldman Sachs of China sourcing.”

Based out of Hong Kong, Schiff traveled often for work, and in 2011 was sent to New York City for three months to help American boots and leather brand The Frye Company open its first store in SoHo. After a successful launch, Schiff was hired to stay on and oversee a division of the footwear business. In this role, his interest in the e-commerce space was piqued. “At that time, nobody but Zappos really thought you could sell high-end footwear online,” says Schiff, who spearheaded bringing Frye’s business into the digital age.

With no e-commerce experience, Schiff helped them re-platform the website. Along with getting up to speed on the tech and digital marketing skills, he also focused on how to bring the story of Frye’s rich legacy and craftsmanship to consumers online. “Leather is such a sensory product — if you go into a Frye store, it hits you in the face how great the leather smell is, but also the hand feel, whether it’s a smooth grain or a pebble grain,” he says. “I was working with the creative team to figure out how to relay those aspects of the product online.” By partnering with whiskey brands and celebrity musicians, Schiff brought Frye’s outdoorsy, Americana legacy to life.

In 2016, Schiff left Frye to work as the chief digital officer for Bendon Group, an apparel company that largely focuses on intimates. It was an expanded role that allowed him to run a larger number of businesses. For two years, he helped navigate the growing marketing and sales opportunities on social media for brands including Frederick’s of Hollywood and Heidi Klum Intimates.

Illustration by Sebastian Arnold

Schiff’s most recent move happened in 2018, when he accepted his current role as vice president, global e-commerce for luxury fashion darling Marc Jacobs, which is owned by LVMH, the largest luxury conglomerate in the world. “I oversee an organization that encompasses technology, merchandising, digital marketing, and all sorts of operations like payment processing and fraud and customer service,” he says, “so it’s putting people and processes together to drive success.” With the start of the pandemic, Schiff’s role became more important than ever, as stores shut down and online shopping was the only commercial channel driving business. “I think we probably got five years of innovation in five months,” he says. “The most rewarding thing is being able to bring together everyone from the creative side of the business, the merchant side, the technology side to make cross-functional ideas come to life and wind up online.”

Reflecting on his time at Colgate, Schiff realizes how invaluable his experience in China, however brief, was: “Fifteen years ago, all China was to the U.S. brands was factories,” he says. “And now, it’s the most important consumer market in the world.” Having lived there, Schiff is able to offer some level of expertise and understanding about the platforms and the customer.

“It’s value added as to what I can offer to a business.”

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f you’re a fan of Fenty or you’ve seen Moulin Rouge! on Broadway, chances are you’ve witnessed the genius work of milliner Sally Caswell ’86. The hatmaker, who also sells her handmade creations through her eponymous website, has both assisted and created for the top names in fashion and theater alike, even lending her honed eye and sculptural skills to exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum. “Everybody needs to have that creative expression in some way,” says Caswell. “Hats do that for me.”

After working odd jobs in New York City postgraduation, Caswell realized she was interested in the arts — not political science, which she had majored in at Colgate. “I’d go to museums in New York and think, ‘This is what I love. I want to learn more,’” she remembers. Caswell returned to school, this time at Hunter College, and received her master’s in art history in 1999. She was promptly hired as an art consultant at a company that restored paintings and evaluated damaged art for private clients.

She worked for them for nearly 20 years before discovering her true passion during her extended sixyear maternity leave. “I started a little business making baby slings — there was a market for that at the birthing center I went to,” explains Caswell, whose mother taught her to sew at a young age. Baby slings turned into baby hats, and before she knew it, Caswell was dreaming of designing hats for adults. “[I wanted to make] something more elaborate or something where I’m not worried that my customer’s going to rip their hat off their head and throw it on the ground.”

She soon enrolled in a millinery class at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and, upon graduating, met Linda Pagan, the owner of the SoHo haunt called The Hat Shop. After joining the Milliners Guild, for which she now serves as president, Caswell began bringing her creations to Pagan to review, in hopes of

getting them placed in the shop. “I didn’t have a line or anything; I was very nervous,” recalls Caswell, who was making blocked felt hats and other casual styles.

Noticing that Pagan was busiest in the spring, during the Kentucky Derby and wedding season, she began making special occasion hats: “It was really fun, and it was a very good market.”

In 2017, not long after the art consulting business closed, Caswell was approached by a fellow Milliners Guild member who asked if she’d be interested in working for theatrical milliner Arnold Levine. “[Theater is] very different from fashion hats,” says Caswell, who accepted the position and still works for Levine part-time. Some of her most notable projects to date include My Fair Lady during its Lincoln Center run; the costumes for Disney Cruise Lines and Royal Caribbean Cruises; and both Frozen and Moulin Rouge — the latter of which recently won the Tony Award for best costume design — on Broadway.

For Caswell, working on fashion hats has always felt more rewarding. So when the opportunity to assist renowned British milliner Stephen Jones, who also happens to be her idol, for New York Fashion Week in September 2019 presented itself, she jumped at the chance. “I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity to work with him,” says Caswell, who aided Jones in finishing pre-crafted hats and also helped bring newly minted ideas to life.

Together, the two worked on pieces for both Marc Jacobs and Rihanna’s Fenty line. “He has this amazing creative mind where he is always thinking of something new to do, something new to try,” says Caswell, “so there was a lot to make for those shows.” Caswell assisted him a second time, to install the headpieces for In Pursuit of Fashion, an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and again for Fashion Week in February 2020, which, of course, was when COVID-19 brought the world — Fashion Week included — to a screeching halt.

During the pandemic, Caswell was initially largely out of work — Broadway and the performing arts industry as a whole had been turned into a ghost town and no one was buying special occasion hats. “Before the pandemic, I had a website that was more informational. Most of my sales were either through Linda or through word of

“THERE IS A HAT FOR EVERYBODY, YOU JUST HAVE TO FIND THE RIGHT ONE.” — Sally Caswell ’86, milliner

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Caswell photos by Susie Lang

HEAD SPACE

Caswell (pictured right) made this hat for the online exhibition Wear the Gold Hat: Millinery Inspired

By The Great Gatsby and Fashion Hedonism. The Milliners Guild exhibition was a nod to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s poem “Then Wear the Gold Hat” in The Great Gatsby.

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L: Caswell made the “Chrissie” hat — inspired by Chrissie Hynde — for the Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock ‘n’ Roll exhibition at the Met. R: “This velour fur felt cap sits low and won’t blow away.

It’s my go-to all winter long,” Caswell says.

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mouth,” she says. Caswell realized she needed to have an e-commerce site. “I changed over to that and then started promoting more casual things,” she says. “That kept me going.”

Last summer, as the world began reopening, new opportunities cropped up: Jones contacted Caswell and asked if she’d be interested in helping him install the headpieces for the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum and, shortly after, for In America: A Lexicon of Fashion, the exhibition on which this year’s Met Gala hinged.

As for Caswell’s proprietary hat business? It continues to grow, with an influx of new customers.

Current offerings include a chess piece–like winter hat inspired by the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, an ephemerally chic powder-blue cloche style, and an asymmetrically rimmed bowler hat with Diane Keaton’s name written all over it.

“There is a hat for everybody, you just have to find the right one,” Caswell says. “If you are going to wear a hat, you have to be prepared because people will look.”

dress to impress on campus with Hami-down Colgate’s bucolic location paves the way for a strong sense of community on campus. But, when it comes to shopping, many students find themselves missing out on the benefits of living in an urban area, like trips to the mall or high-end thrift stores. Though online shopping can provide a temporary fix, the packaging and transportation are not sustainable. So, Cameron Stokes ’23 and Leigh Frankel ’23 took the initiative to start Hami-Down, an online platform for students to sell pre-owned clothes to each other.

“It provides students with a way to make money while also reducing their carbon footprint because they are reducing waste from shipping and returning items,” says Frankel.

The entrepreneurial duo developed the platform through Thought Into Action, which they joined in fall 2020. They launched Hami-Down in spring 2021 after just one semester of working with their mentors.

The business is run through Instagram (@hamidown_gate), allowing students to submit their items to sell as well as browse available items for purchase. With 850 followers, Hami-Down has reached 25% of Colgate’s student population in just over one semester, and has sold 143 items.

“The success of Hami-Down is more than what we could have imagined, and we have loved connecting with more of the Colgate community in the process of running the business,” Stokes says.

Students can buy a wide range

of items: semi-formal dresses that sell anywhere from $30 to $50, just in time for dates or parties; a pair of new L.L. Bean shearling snow boots for $170; a black suede mini-skirt for $20.

If students are not looking for new additions to their closets, Hami-Down also sells dorm essentials such as string lights, an air mattress, a printer, and even a Keurig coffee machine. If shoppers can’t find what they’re looking for, Hami-Down often updates with multiple items per day on Instagram.

The popular business shows no signs of slowing down. Stokes and Frankel are dedicated to the growth of their endeavor and are working to ensure its presence on campus for years to come. Currently, they are devoting time to training two other students who will take over the business when they graduate.

The clothing exchange group also has partnered with the Office of Sustainability to promote earthfriendly consumption and reach more students for in-person clothing swaps.

Stokes and Frankel both expressed their passion for fashion, but they prioritize their dedication to making a positive impact on the earth and the community.

“I definitely love fashion, and it was one of the motivating factors in creating Hami-Down,” Stokes says. “However, Hami-Down is mostly about efficiency and sustainability.”

— Tess Dunkel ’24

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CREW TEAM

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atie Crockett ’06 is somewhat of a unicorn within fashion, an industry known for its fickleness.

She’s remained at the same brand, J.Crew, for 15 years since starting as a merchant’s assistant in the men’s department directly postgraduation.

She now holds the title of SVP of merchandising for men’s and Crewcuts, J.Crew’s children’s division.

“The company and the industry have changed so much since I started — my job feels very different than it did 15 years ago,” says Crockett, who also notes the company’s inspirational leadership when asked how she’s remained motivated. “I feel very invested in the outcome of J.Crew as a company — there’s a lot of opportunity ahead of us.”

In college, Crockett relished leafing through J.Crew’s magazine mailers. So when a classmate, Kate Christian ’06, hooked her up with an interview, she jumped at the chance. “It was this classic brand, but it also was doing something interesting in the market,” she says, noting that, while it was a contemporary retailer, it always felt a notch above the rest.

As Crockett climbed the ladder, she entered into the women’s apparel space, but in spring 2018, she returned to her roots when she was promoted to VP of merchandising for men’s and Crewcuts. “It was so amazing to make this move because every division has its nuances,” says Crockett. “I’ve been able to sharpen a lot of different skills being on the men’s side, because the businesses run a bit differently and the products have different life cycles.” As a mother of three, Crockett also enjoys working in the children’s space.

“It’s really rounded out my career to have access to all of these different areas of the company.”

Crockett was promoted to SVP of her division in April 2019, just one year before the pandemic would force her to adjust to a completely new modus operandi. When offices closed, working from home brought a host of unprecedented challenges to a role so dependent upon seeing physical product. “I would’ve never in a million years thought that I could do my jobs in a remote setting,” says Crockett. “We were shipping fabric samples to designers’ and fabric buyers’ homes so they could see them in the flesh and be like, ‘I think we were right with this; I’ll hold it up to the camera screen.’” Adding fuel to the fire, J.Crew, like so many other retailers, was forced to file for bankruptcy early on in the pandemic. “We emerged from that stronger than ever,” she says.

While Crockett is back part-time in the office now, supply chain issues will continue to impact her work for the foreseeable future. “Even though the pandemic is slowing [for now], there are a lot of ripple effects that are still greatly affecting the way we do our jobs.”

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Illustrations by Sebastian Arnold

OLD IS NEW

I

n 2015, Kristen (Carr) ’94 Ross left her retail job at Saks Fifth Avenue’s store in Boca Raton, Fla., to accept a local position as a luxury manager at then-scrappy start-up TheRealReal. Launched in 2011, it’s since grown into the premier reselling platform for mid- to high-end items by brands including Chanel, Dior, and Balenciaga, as well as Rag & Bone, Mother, and Solid & Striped. In her role, Ross was first tasked with going into clients’

homes and reviewing their wardrobes, selecting pieces for consignment, cataloguing and packing them up, and shipping them to the company’s warehouse in New Jersey, after which they’d be listed for sale on therealreal.com. “One of the things I’ve seen in living color is how TheRealReal has changed the way people shop,” says Ross, who has risen to senior group manager.

“They buy brands that they know they can resell and put back into the circular economy.”

During the pandemic, TheRealReal quickly figured out how to shift its in-person concierge consignment service to online, conducting appointments via Google Hangouts and FaceTime. “We were promoting a lot of supply and sales through statement earrings and statement tops and things that you would see on camera,” says Ross. Whether it’s the uberwealthy hunting down a specific vintage item or younger or less affluent consumers looking for a way to access the luxury market, TheRealReal has a solid stream of selffulfilling clientele.

Because of its commitment to their three R’s — Resell, Revive, Reimagine — the company has been widely lauded for its somewhat sustainable practices.

“One of the biggest accomplishments TheRealReal has made is bringing awareness to the importance of reducing the fashion industry’s carbon footprint in order to save the environment,” says Ross. “I love that I’m part of this movement.”

Although Ross had always wanted to work in fashion, she accepted various positions in public relations out of college that saw her move to Washington, D.C., Boston, and, finally, Boca Raton, Fla., where she still lives. It was there, after the birth of her second child, where she decided to pivot and make a career in fashion happen.

Alongside her friend, Ross launched an Etcetera business, where she would sell clothing and accessories by the namesake brand to private clients by appointment. “We got collections four times a year and we turned one of our two homes into boutique showrooms for a week,” explains Ross. “Boca is a super social, charitable town, so there were a lot of events going on and we would also style people for them.”

In 2012, Ross ascended to the next echelon of the fashion industry, working at Saks Fifth Avenue as the Fifth Avenue Club director at the retailer’s flagship store in Boca Raton. Ross managed a team of the store’s top stylists, who would work with private clients off the selling floor and pull collections and pieces for them to view and try on. “It was a personalized styling service for the top elite clientele of the store,” says Ross. She also coordinated major events for heavyweight designers like Stella McCartney and Roberto Cavalli, who would present runway shows with their newest collections both at the store and at various off-site locations. “It was front-row exposure to some of the most amazing designers and their collections,” recalls Ross. “It was a magical time.”

Still, Ross didn’t want to stay in retail; she had two kids, and holiday vacation wasn’t guaranteed. So when TheRealReal entered into a partnership with Saks, introducing Ross to the start-up, she quickly applied.

“The universe was putting me on the right path.”

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Iron Fist or Kid Gloves?

BY ALETA MAYNE

ILLUSTRATION BY MICHAEL GLENWOOD

Research by psychologist Michele Gelfand ’89 looks at whether countries are culturally “tight” or “loose” and how those distinctions factor into the ways they manage a crisis.

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I

n Saudi Arabia, drinking alcohol is punishable by imprisonment, fines, and even public flogging.

Meanwhile, in the United States, alcohol is not only legal, but it’s also often celebrated, and some cities allow public consumption on the streets.

Cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand ’89 studies how countries can be classified as “tight” or “loose” — measured by how strictly people abide by social norms — and

how those categorizations play a role in times of crises.

Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and China are examples of tight countries that enforce order with strict punishments, whereas the United States, New Zealand, and Brazil are considered loose countries that are more permissible.

Gelfand wrote a book on her research, titled Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World (Simon & Schuster, 2018). Recently, she’s been

featured in several media outlets for her analysis of the ways in which different countries have been handling COVID-19.

As the lead author, Gelfand published a paper with other researchers in Lancet Planetary Health in early 2021 that showed “the liability of looseness.” In their paper comparing 57 countries, the researchers found that in countries with more looseness, “there were five times the number of COVID-19 cases, and they had almost nine times the deaths,” explains Gelfand, who is the John H. Scully Professor of cross-cultural management at the

mismatch” when there’s a collective threat, because people are less fearful of a danger like COVID-19 and are therefore less likely to curtail their behavior.

Still, not all tight cultures have handled the pandemic well and not all loose cultures have done poorly. “It’s just a correlation,” she says. “Places like New Zealand were more ambidextrous, where people tighten under threat and then loosen when it’s safe.

The goal is to be able to understand the context and shift cultural gears as needed.”

One type of culture is not superior to the other, she emphasizes. There are

When facing a longer-term threat like COVID-19, the tightening instinct has “shortcircuited in many loose nations.”

Stanford Graduate School of Business and professor of psychology by courtesy.

How countries have become tight or loose is generally based on how much chronic threat they’ve historically faced, Gelfand has found through data collection that she published in Science. Cultures that have continuously been threatened by events like invasion from other countries, natural disasters, pathogen outbreaks, and population density have needed to enforce order and strict rules. “Of course, all countries have experienced threat, but some have faced it chronically — to a degree that required an evolved tightening response,” she wrote in “A Failure of Fear: Why Certain Nations Flunked the COVID-19 Threat Test,” in Behavioral Scientist.

In the United States, Americans banded together after the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and were “willing to sacrifice some freedom for constraint,” Gelfand noted in a Boston Globe op-ed. But when facing a longerterm threat like COVID-19, the tightening instinct has “short-circuited in many loose nations.” Americans today, for example, are not used to coordinating their social action toward a common goal, compared with other nations, and “we’re more ambivalent about sacrificing our freedom for strict rules that constrain our choices.”

Gelfand is quick to point out that both tight and loose cultures have strengths and liabilities. In America, looseness promotes traits like optimism and creativity, which are culturally valuable. On the other hand, optimism is what she calls an “evolutionary

advantages and drawbacks to both. Tight cultures have more severe punishments but less crime. Loose cultures are more lenient with the rules, but people are more tolerant of others’ differences and more open to change. It’s what she calls the “tight-loose trade-off.”

Striking a balance is the takeaway, says Gelfand, who also applies this research to organizations, households, and individuals.

Through a grant, she has been contracted by the U.S. military, which is “dealing with a lot of threat, [but] it also has a lot of coordination issues,” she says. “Maybe they can insert some looseness into some non-safety domains,” she proposes. “The question would be, does everyone really need to wear the same socks or have a certain type of haircut? Is that serving a function?” In the book, she calls this “flexible tightness — where leaders might want to insert some latitude.”

She’s also working with some companies’ social media platforms, exploring the question: “How do we make a place that has freedom, but also has some civility and norms like we would have in everyday conversations because people feel a sense of accountability and they restrict the range of their behavior?”

For Gelfand, the silver lining of the pandemic is that people are paying more attention to her field. “When COVID hit, people suddenly realized that culture matters,” Gelfand says.

She’s been doing this work since

becoming inspired at Colgate by Professor of Psychology Carrie Keating, whose department is now housed under the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative. “She taught a class on crosscultural human development, and it changed my life,” Gelfand says. “I couldn’t believe people were studying things in psychology, like basic visual illusions, and seeing whether they replicate in Africa, for example. I was like, ‘Maybe I can make a career out of this.’” Keating recommended other scholars for Gelfand to talk to, leading her to earn a PhD at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, mentored by Harry Triandis, the “father of modern crosscultural psychology.”

Colgate also set the trajectory of her life because it’s where she met her husband of 27 years, Todd Betke ’89. “I veer, truth be told, moderately loose,” Gelfand says. “Todd veers moderately tight. He’s a lawyer — he has to be.” The couple, along with their two daughters, “are constantly negotiating tightloose in our household,” she quips.

In 2021, Gelfand was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. She also recently co-founded the Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution, bringing together experts from the different sciences — psychology, biology, neuroscience, anthropology, and computer science.

“Culture really matters, so we need to have more conversations about it,” Gelfand says, “and we have to have leaders who understand the dynamics of culture.”

Are you a rule maker or rule breaker?

Take Gelfand’s mindset quiz: michelegelfand.com/ tl-quiz

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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T

BEHIND THE SCENES

he city awaits.

A group of 15 students heads to the New York Film Festival with passes in hand. There’s a red carpet. They watch Dune two weeks before it’s released in theaters. They see the U.S. premiere of Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and then catch a Q&A with cast members including Bill Murray.

This is just the start of the fall Film and Media Studies Off-Campus Study Group in New York City. The students have the whole semester ahead of them.

Another week, they’ll attend NewFest, an LGBTQ+ film festival, and a few will volunteer to assist with festival operations.

And on yet another occasion, they’ll venture to the opening night of DOC NYC to watch a screening of Listening to Kenny G., a documentary by former Colgate professor Penny Lane. One student, Rebecca Sweigart ’23, even dares to get a selfie with the Grammy Award–winning saxophonist. (“He is very kind,” she notes.)

Back at headquarters — the Gotham Film and Media Institute in Brooklyn — students will meet with alumni such as Caitlin Grossjung ’13, a producer who has worked for National Geographic, Netflix, and Hulu.

In the classroom there, the students will dive into deep discussions during courses, including Hollywood and the World and New York Media, with their study group leader, Professor Mary Simonson.

“I want them to understand the ecosystem in which film and media are produced, distributed, and consumed, and how tightly connected those processes are to each other,” says Simonson, who is also the Daniel C. Benton ’80 Endowed Chair in arts, creativity, and innovation.

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Film and media studies students immerse themselves in New York City and learn from industry insiders.

By aleta mayne

Decorian Sims ’22 (pictured left, center) filmed hoop culture at Brooklyn Bridge Park for his city symphony assignment.

Photography By laura barisonzi

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42 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

“We spent a few days just getting to know the camera,” says Jen Trujillo ’22, “practicing putting in the film and then taking it out to get a feel for the camera.”

“My favorite part has been getting to work in [16 mm] film,” Joe Giordano ’22 says. “As much as it can be difficult and a challenge, it’s an exciting challenge.

I’ve never gotten to do anything like it before.”

T

hroughout the fall 2021 semester, New York City served as a campus for students in film and media studies. In addition to attending film festivals and hobnobbing with industry insiders, they further developed their skills and knowledge base — all through Gotham EDU. For one of their first assignments, called “city symphonies,” the students turned their lenses on the Big Apple, using Bolex cameras to make 16 mm films. Cait Carvalho, Gotham’s director of curriculum, taught the Independent Filmmaking Production course.

Decorian Sims ’22 focused on hoop culture, filming at Brooklyn Bridge Park. “It has a great backdrop of the city,” he says of the location. A longtime basketball fan from Atlanta, Sims had been looking forward to spending time in New York where outdoor courts are a place of camaraderie for both amateur players and NBA professionals.

Jen Trujillo ’22 found inspiration for her film from an assigned reading in Simonson’s course Hollywood and the World: Performing Gender and Sexuality Onscreen. In the assigned book chapter, the author looks at public statues in New York City and notes the imbalance of those representing women versus men (5 vs.

150, which the city has been working to ameliorate in recent years). Trujillo says she wanted her city symphony to “portray women going about their days and how this city doesn’t have a lot of monuments or buildings [representing] them. What does that implicate for them in the city they inhabit?”

When Joe Giordano ’22 arrived in the city for the first time, they noticed the water and decided to use that as the theme of their film. “We’re right near the river, and it was something I never really thought about with New York City because I’d never been here before. You think about the cityscape and those crowded streets, but you don’t think about the water and the different things it can bring — the quiet and calm, which offset that intensity of the city.”

None of the students had ever worked in 16 mm before, so the hands-on learning brought new challenges and training. “I think it is really instructive and useful for them,” Simonson says. “This is a generation where many of them have never seen film; many of them have never even shot photos on film.”

When they finished several days of filming, the students gathered in an editing studio, cutting and splicing their footage by

hand. “It’s so different from editing digitally — everything’s much more permanent,” Giordano says. “In digital editing, you can watch it immediately to see if you like it and then change it effortlessly. [With analog,] if you don’t like something and you’ve already taped it together, well, that’s a shame.”

AFTER 9 TO 5 Being in a place with so many possibilities, the students embarked on their own adventures in their free time.

Trujillo moved to the other side of the camera: Through a talent agency, she was cast as an extra on a new Apple TV+ show.

The name of the show is a secret, but she can reveal that it’s a futuristic tale about global warming. “Being on the set and seeing all the moving parts coming together has really shown me the magnitude and the scale of what it takes to create films,” she says.

Meanwhile, after class, Sims rushed off to meetings at Turner Sports, where he is an NBA content marketing intern. For his final film class project, he compiled a montage of the greatest basketball players — a piece he hopes to use for a future campaign at Turner. “I’m making something that I feel will align with what I would like to do postgrad,” he says.

Giordano’s internship was at The Gotham, working in the archives. Giordano spent hours digitizing cassette tapes of filmmakers talking about their experiences.

The clips are from an event the organization holds that’s now called Gotham Week.

“These panels are important,” says Giordano, citing one example of a discussion about being a woman of color working in film and facing racism and sexism. This archival work is necessary “so we understand the mistakes of the past,” Giordano says. Like Sims, Giordano views the internship as valuable for the future. “I want to go into archival [work] as a career because I think it’s important that art and information are not lost, and it’s amazing how fragile some of the more significant media in the world can be.”

YOU CAN COUNT ON HIM Jeffrey Sharp ’89, executive director of The Gotham, had the vision for the institute’s EDU program when he accepted the position three years ago to run the organization that was then called the Independent Filmmaker Project. Sharp is Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

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Seven Things We Like About Jeffrey Sharp ’89

1

He’s producing a new movie starring Awkwafina. The Baccarat Machine (in pre-production) is based on a true story about a Chinese woman with a gift for gambling. “It’s a globetrotting, super fun movie about people defying the odds,” Sharp says.

2

His mentor at Colgate was John Knecht, the Russell Colgate Distinguished University Professor of art & art history and film & media studies emeritus. Sharp was a sociology and anthropology major; there was no film and media studies major at the time. “I petitioned to join one of John’s film classes, and this was the moment I realized I found my great passion in life.”

3 4

Filmmaker Magazine

After graduating from Colgate, he moved to LA and worked with Oliver Stone on three films, including The Doors.

He earned his MFA at Columbia. There, he met director Kimberly Peirce, who was working on an early screenplay for Boys Don’t Cry based on the true story

44 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

of Brandon Teena, a trans teen who was murdered as part of a hate crime.

5

With former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, he co-founded the digital publishing company Open Road Integrated Media. “I was always fascinated with how, if you’re a creative producer, a book to build a film on is valuable real estate.”

6

Gotham EDU was partly inspired by his personal experience. Sharp took a year off from Colgate after his sophomore year so he could spend time in New York City: “I felt like I was missing out on the world.”

Through this new program, students can enjoy “everything New York has to offer as part of their education, and they get credit for it, so that’s pretty amazing.”

7

His favorite movie: The Worst Person in the World (2021), which he describes as a “Norwegian, dark, romantic comedy-drama film that I saw in Cannes this year.”

a producer known for films including Boys Don’t Cry (1999), You Can Count on Me (2000), and Proof (2005).

At The Gotham, Sharp’s role is overseeing the creative programmatic side of the 40-year-old institute — which he has known since he embarked on his own filmmaking career. As an independent filmmaker starting out in the mid-’90s, Sharp relied on the organization: “It was the community you needed to connect with in order to figure out how to get a film made.” Today, filmmakers still come to The Gotham from around the world to “connect with pathways to real access,” he explains.

Through the EDU program, he wants to extend that pathway to students. “This initiative was something I wanted to develop as an opportunity for college students to come to New York… [I wanted to] create this footprint for them to explore the city and get a toehold on careers in the independent film industry,” he says. “As a New York filmmaker, I was watching [East Coast colleges] send our best and brightest students to the West Coast to pick up jobs, and I was thinking, ‘Why aren’t we supporting the filmmaking community in New York?’”

The timing overlapped with Sharp joining Colgate’s Board of Trustees, so he started working with Chief of Staff to the President Hanna Rodriguez-Farrar — whom Sharp says has “incredible relationships throughout academia” — to compile a list of institutions that might be interested in the program.

Gotham EDU launched in summer 2019, and Colgate was one of the first institutions to join, supporting the tuition for its students during that eight-week session. Building off the program’s summer success, Sharp worked with Simonson to expand it to this year’s semester-long experience. “This happened to be at the right moment for Colgate,” he notes, because the University is actively working to create more opportunities for arts students as part of the Middle Campus initiative.

Sharp interacted with students regularly in the fall, and he enlisted their help to pull off the institute’s biggest event of the year: The Gotham Awards show, honoring independent filmmakers. “They’ll be working behind the scenes to make it all happen,” he said at press time, anticipating the November event. “It’s a big night.”

Colgate students are the first to spend a semester at Gotham EDU, but Sharp hopes it will become a year-round educational program for multiple institutions. “Art is so collaborative,” he says. “Whether it’s the summer program or a semester program, you go back to [college] with a totally different perspective.”

Below: Alex Chu ’22 is helped by Professor Mary Simonson (middle) to wind film into a viewer. Right: Annika Kerman-Browning ’22 focused her city symphony on doorways and windows in Chinatown.

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46 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

A Snapshot of Colgate’s Off-Campus Study Programs Q&A with Joanna Holvey Bowles, director of off-campus study, and Martin Wong, associate dean of the faculty of global and local initiatives What does the Office of Off-Campus Study do?

JHB: We offer programs in the United States and internationally, [including] opportunities in 50 countries, [through both our own study groups and] 107 off-campus approved programs (not operated by Colgate). We are the number one baccalaureate institution in the United States sending students for semester opportunities abroad because we have an unusually large number of semesterlong faculty-led programs: 17–20 every year. In addition, we have extended study programs, which are on-campus courses followed by a field experience of three weeks.

MW: There’s no other small liberal arts institution that runs the number of programs we do. They are designed by our departments, our faculty. They can be tailored to fit in with our curriculum and with the Colgate ethos in general.

That’s a really special and unique thing.

What is the history of off-campus study?

JHB: There’s a fascinating tale to tell. It was a post–World War II effort to encourage people-to-people friendships, academic-to-academic linkages that talked about peace time and not about warfare. Colgate is one of three institutions in the mid-1950s that was given money by the Department of State, which was a newly formed part of government, to try this out. The first place Colgate took students to was Mendoza, Argentina, to further their Spanish language skills and their ideas of politics and economics.

The first Colgate program to go international that is still operating is the London Economics Study Group that went in 1962 for the first time. [Our] oldest program in the United States is in Washington, D.C., as a sort of laboratory for learning about our nation’s capital. It was the first of its kind in the nation that began in 1935.

Before the pandemic, what was the typical number of students going abroad every semester?

MW: We typically have, on average, 450 students a year combined on both approved programs and Colgate’s own study groups. That means more than half of every class is participating, typically in their junior year, on the study-abroad programs. That demonstrates the hunger for students to be able to participate in these kinds of opportunities.

What off-campus study programs took place in fall 2021?

JHB: We had six study groups off campus, one in New York City and five in Europe. We had 100 students abroad.

MW: The reports we’re getting back are that, despite all of the challenges [due to the pandemic], faculty and students are having great experiences together. Students and faculty are finding ways to make it work, to retain that special experience.

What is the future of off-campus study at Colgate?

JHB: Adapting to new realities and student interests.

What’s exciting is the advent of people being interested in new destinations, in creating opportunities that have not been open to students previously. Students are coming forward and saying, ‘Do you have a way for me to do this or learn this language?’

MW: Making sure we are flexible and dynamic in our programming and in a way that responds to changes in the field, in academic interests, and in programming at Colgate. As we roll out new academic initiatives like the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative or Middle Campus, those things are going to be opportunities for us to change our programs.

— Excerpted from an interview by Dan DeVries on 13, Colgate’s podcast

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Endeavor Textiles

Color Ways Kimber (Clark) ’87 Baldwin blends art and science to produce multihued skeins of yarn that are pure alchemy.

ince opening Fiber Optic Yarns, her studio and shop in Milford, Ohio, Kimber (Clark) ’87 Baldwin has provided customdyed skeins of yarn, not just for knitters, crocheters, and other fiber artists, but also for interior designers, theatrical set designers, and brides — lots of brides. In particular, she remembers one woman who requested individual color palettes for eight coordinating shawls that she wanted to knit for her bridesmaids. Often, such newlyweds will return as young mothers, looking to make heirloom baby blankets and clothes.

It’s that sense of community that Baldwin most cherishes about the business. She founded Fiber Optic Yarns in 2008 when it became increasingly difficult to balance her career as a medical researcher with managing a young family. “I began to wonder if I could better integrate my love of creating something out of nothing with my need to be there for my children,” she says.

She discovered the answer in knitting, which has been her “constant companion, for the creative joy and relaxation” ever since her days as a chemistry major at Colgate, where Sharon (Hefter) ’87 Loving taught her the craft. Acting on that passion, Baldwin and husband Michael, a chemistry professor at the University of Cincinnati, invested a few hundred dollars in a variety of yarns and nontoxic dyes. “I’d run experiments with color mixes, and I’d go to my knitting group and say, ‘Look at this really fun blue-purple-green yarn I created,’” Kimber remembers. “I wound up hosting

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knitting night at my house and selling everything.”

An Etsy shop soon followed. “We had storage bins [filled with yarn] stacked to the ceiling and along the walls of every room in the house,” Kimber laughs. “It was very organized — to find the worsted wool, go to the dining room.” In 2013, the couple bought and gutted a blighted property and divided its 3,500 square feet into a studio space, office, and a selling/inventory floor. These days, Fiber Optic employs seven people who prepare, dye, and fulfill orders (90% of the company’s business comes from online sales and appearances at textile festivals).

The luxurious textures — merino and cashmere, yes, but yak down and bison fiber — as well as the intricate, carefully considered color schemes that characterize Kimber’s yarns and fibers place them in a rarified realm beyond the acrylic yarn your grandmother used when crocheting her afghans. Priced at roughly $20-$50 per skein, these hand-dyed delicacies bear evocative names like the “Jabberwocky” collection, a sophisticated take on the Lewis Carroll classic, replete with regal reds and moody mauves. The seasons, too, are a source of inspiration, as in “Fir to Frost,” a wintry mix of merino and cashmere strands arrayed in a

Ross Van Pelt

S

gradient from deep piney green to hoary gray.

Turning her imagination loose is one of Kimber’s favorite tasks. “I don’t follow trends,” she says, “but instead think about color combinations or dye application methods that haven’t been used before. We like to set the curve, not follow it.” She also devotes much of her time to designing and building the equipment that allows her to capture the color on her yarns. Ultimately, though, Kimber remains mindful of the individual customers who keep coming back. “That collaboration between the dye studio and the fiber artist is a primary force for inspiration, keeping what we do fresh and cutting edge,” she observes. “It forces me beyond my comfort zone and drives a flurry of creativity.”

— JoAnn Greco

Entrepreneurship

‘Mom’s on the Phone Talking About Caskets Again’ In this digital age, customization is at the forefront of the consumer’s mind. Why shouldn’t that extend to plans for the afterlife? s the Siegel family wakes each morning, they think about death.

It’s on the mind of Liz (Baker) ’02 Siegel as she climbs out of bed, readies herself for the day, and gets the children, Claire, Caroline, and Eli, off to school. Soon, she’s dialing funeral homes and buyers, suggesting the elegant Orion, a glistening steel model with a plushy crepe interior. Both the head and foot of the Orion can be adjusted, and there’s a rubber gasket and locking mechanism. “It’s just this beautiful, dignified thing,” Liz says, “and we’re always looking to honor our customers and their loved ones and treat them with dignity and respect.”

The Orion is a coffin.

Josh Siegel ’01 is also pondering the afterlife in between calls in his home office, where he works as CPO of RealSelf, a health care marketplace. He later joins Liz in the morning meeting for their joint direct-toconsumer company, Titan Casket. Billed as “the Warby Parker of caskets,” the company, founded in 2020, offers made-to-order resting places for purchase online. From sports team themes to plain pine boxes, Josh and Liz aim to provide a variety of affordable choices to those planning funerals.

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Illustration by Stuart Bradford

The duo aren’t just entrepreneurs filling a hole in the massive end-of-life industry (everyone dies, after all). Liz is a lawyer by trade, and Josh holds an MBA from Columbia with a 10-year term at Amazon on his résumé. With their combined law and e-commerce acumen, they’re able to make analytical decisions to run a successful company. Plus, their business partner, Scott Ginsberg, has more than two decades of experience in the casket industry. Together, their goal is to disrupt Big Casket, offering options more in-line with today’s tech-savvy buyers. “Historically, you pick a venue, the funeral home, and then the rest of your planning is based on what that venue has available,” Josh says. “But this next generation ... that’s not their expectations when they come into any event. They’re going to want to personalize this event to how they want to be honored, or how to honor their loved one.”

Navigating that industry can be opaque for consumers, and making death decisions for loved ones can be pressure-filled. Often, when someone dies, the consumer will purchase a casket directly from the funeral home. But, those will usually come at a steep price, according to the Siegels. Because of this trend, Titan often cites the Federal Trade Commission’s Funeral Rule: “When you purchase a casket from a third party, the funeral home has to treat it as though it were a purchase they had made themselves,” Liz says. “They have to accept delivery, they can’t make it burdensome for the customer.”

That rule has allowed their business to boom: In addition to the Titan website, which offers a build-your-own-casket customization option, the company also sells through Amazon, Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Costco. Their supply of coffins ships from four warehouses across the country, and they sell thousands of caskets each year.

Because the family business is run at home, talk of post-death plans isn’t offlimits when the kids are around. In fact, it’s encouraged. “For them, it’s not that big of a deal, because they just see it as ‘Mom’s on the phone talking about caskets again,’” Liz says.

“They both get to see their parents working together and building something,” Josh adds.

When he and Liz hosted a five-child learning pod in their suburban Washington State home at the beginning of the pandemic, the children overheard the adults taking casket calls. And, “there might just be an urn just casually resting somewhere,” Josh jokes.

— Rebecca Docter Titan Casket has also supplied coffins for TV productions, such as Castle Rock and The Plot Against America.

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

49

endeavor

Sustainability

Closing the Loop At Last Bottle Clothing, Stuart Wood ’97 is making plastic T-shirts and trying to shake up the apparel industry.

aking a comfortable T-shirt out of plastic bottles was more difficult than Stuart Wood ’97 expected.

Although he thought the process of research and development for his startup, Last Bottle Clothing, would take about a year, it ended up taking three. Some early attempts at fabrics were soft but fell apart in the wash. Others were durable, but “Let’s just say you wouldn’t want to wear it around for too long,” Wood says.

He wouldn’t give up, though, because at stake was more than a scratchy shirt. Wood hopes that his young company will help force the entire apparel industry to become more sustainable.

The problem of plastic pollution has been on Wood’s mind for decades. While he was at Colgate in the ’90s, his parents were living in Southeast Asia, and he did a lot of traveling in that region. Everywhere he went, he saw discarded plastic shopping bags and bottles. “I’ve always noticed it and been concerned about it,” he says.

One way to keep plastic out of the environment is to incorporate plastic waste

M

1. RECYCLED

BOTTLES Each shirt utilizes an average of 13 plastic bottles.

HOW IT WORKS 4. SOFT YARN

AND FABRIC The pellets are melted into small strands of fiber and spun into a soft yarn, which is knitted into fabric.

50 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

into clothing. Some products, like polar fleece, already do this. But if your fleece jacket ends up in the garbage eventually, “What’s the point?” Wood says. Those plastic bottles had only a temporary reprieve from the waste stream.

That’s why, when Wood left his corporate job in 2015, he wanted to start a different kind of company. If he could manufacture clothing out of plastic, then recycle the clothing itself into more clothing, the plastic could theoretically stay out of landfills or oceans forever.

Wood and his business partner, Justin Koehn, founded Last Bottle Clothing in 2016. After the early days spent testing flimsy or downright painful T-shirts, they eventually found a formula for fabric that was both durable and soft.

The raw material is plastic bottles, mostly from municipal recyclers. In factories, the bottles are cut up and melted down into a material called flake. That’s made into thin fibers about an inch and a half long, similar to cotton fibers. Machines spin those fibers into thread and weave them into a cloth that, Wood says, feels just like your softest cotton tee.

Used shirts can go back to the beginning of the process. “We can chop up the shirts and mix them back in with those recycled bottles and put it right back through the supply chain,” Wood says. “We’re making closed-loop apparel.”

As the Last Bottle team started selling their shirts to customers, though, they realized that closing that loop in real life might be harder than they’d anticipated.

2. PLASTIC FLAKES The plastic bottles are chopped into fine flakes.

People might not remember to recycle clothing they bought years earlier.

So, in 2019, the team decided to pivot and focus on selling directly to corporations that have uniform programs. A company can regularly collect worn-out shirts from its employees and send them back to be recycled. In this way, Wood hopes they can recapture nearly all of the plastic in the clothing.

That’s not the only way Last Bottle is treading lightly on the environment. The process of making cloth from bottles uses a tiny fraction of the water that goes into growing cotton, Wood says, and none of the pesticides. Perhaps most significantly, the company only uses suppliers within an approximately 200-mile radius of its headquarters in Georgia. That gives the T-shirts a tiny carbon footprint compared to most clothing, which travels around the world to reach American consumers.

“We’re still a relatively young start-up,” Wood says. He and his team are looking to add investors and scale up their business.

He says his goal, though, isn’t necessarily to make the business as big as possible, but to put pressure on the highly polluting, carbonintensive apparel industry as a whole.

Looking at the planet today, “We can’t bequeath what we currently have to our kids, or to our grandkids,” Wood says. But he dreams of making his company competitive enough that the world’s apparel giants start shrinking their own environmental footprints. If that happens, he says, “We can have an impact that is far greater than us.”

— Elizabeth Preston

3. PLASTIC PELLETS

The bottle flakes, or shreds from recycled shirts, are melted and formed into pellets and shipped to the fiber manufacturer.

The Last Bottle Clothing company takes plastic bottles and transforms them into apparel.

5. CUT AND SEW

The fabric is cut and sewn in a nearby facility. The fabric is durable, lightweight, and phenomenally soft.

Stuart Wood Founder and CEO

6. YEARS OF WEAR

After many years of wear, you can send your clothing back to be fully recycled into new clothing, eliminating tons of apparel waste.

Illustration by Peter and Maria Hoey

endeavor

FILM

It’s in His Nature Educating audiences through documentaries

eep in the Everglades, Rich Kern ’66 climbed down from a 50-foot tower where he’d been filming a nest of swallow-tailed kites. It was the beginning of the rainy season, so mosquitoes were hatching, and the insects carpeted his body. “The fluffy baby hawks were themselves covered with mosquitoes and shaking, trying to keep them off,” Kern remembers. Suddenly, a swarm of dragonflies zoomed toward him, and within minutes, they cleared the air. “Whoosh, they came in like jet fighters,” Kern says, “and even snatched them off my shirt.”

He didn’t capture this moment on camera, but Kern’s behind-the-scenes experiences as a nature documentarian have sometimes been as exciting as what he did catch on film.

One of the pivotal moments of Kern’s career path occurred in another densely forested region — 10,000 miles away and decades earlier. Kern was serving in the Vietnam War as a Swift Boat commander when he received a letter from his older brother asking if he would join a partnership

Jeffery Salter

D

to purchase 400 acres of Florida wilderness. “I was pretty preoccupied,” he remembers, “but I was a naturalist at heart, so I went right for it.” Paying $250 per acre, the 12 partners became co-owners of a preserve surrounding Fisheating Creek, a small river feeding Lake Okeechobee.

Upon return from Vietnam, Kern taught biology (his Colgate major) to high schoolers while he continued practicing his hobby of photographing wildlife. A friend took note of Kern’s talent and offered to lend him some 16 mm movie equipment he’d just bought. The preserve was the obvious location for the budding filmmaker to practice: “It had all the alligators and otters and amazing wildlife that Florida has,” Kern says. “I produced a documentary about this marvelous wilderness habitat we had purchased.”

He joined the National Audubon Society Film Lecture Series to debut his film, Florida Cypress Sanctuary: Fisheating Creek, in venues nationwide, sometimes drawing audiences of 1,000 people. Kern made additional documentaries and started presenting his films on a travel adventure circuit.

In 1978, along with his co-producer and wife, Judy (also a biologist), Kern established a nonprofit called Encounters in Excellence through which the couple began showing their films at Florida schools. Since its start, the nonprofit has reached almost 2 million students, making it the largest assembly series in Miami-Dade public school history.

The Kerns’ son, Richard, has now taken over

the business, but the founding filmmakers support him with camera work, script reading, and fundraising.

Habitats — mostly in Florida but also in faraway places like Indonesia and Cuba — have been the focus of the films the Kerns have shown in school auditoriums. For the classroom, Encounters in Excellence also produces shorter bites on subject matter requested by teachers, like a video explaining the food web.

In approaching a documentary, the filmmakers will weave in the historical and cultural aspects of the region when it’s fitting, such as with Rainforests of the Maya.

Closer to home, there is one subject that’s been skulking right under Kern’s nose. A rare Florida panther has been using the preserve as a corridor to expand its range northward from the Big Cypress National Preserve just west of the Everglades. “We’d had some questionable sightings in recent years,” Kern says, “but the camera traps we set up last winter proved that the cats were using our preserve as part of their northern expansion. Nothing could be more exciting for us.”

Although those cameras are not “up to snuff compared to [the footage] we get with cameras that are more expensive with more sensitivity and bigger sensors,” Kern says, they are “a very good scientific tool.” The documentarians plan to make a short video to show kids what can’t be seen by humans in the daylight.

Moving toward retirement, Kern is focusing on a different medium: oil painting. As he treks through the preserve these days, he maintains his biologist’s perspective — noticing the lighting on a cabbage palm tree or cypress — but he’s now creating scenes on canvas.

— Aleta Mayne The Associated Press covered Kern when he was a Colgate student. It wrote about his Jan Plan project where he’d spent the month in Florida studying spiders and their webs, taking detailed photographs and collecting specimens. The project gained him acceptance into a biology Jan Plan the following year when, as a senior, he studied bats in Jamaica with Professor Robert Goodwin.

Winter 2022 Colgate Magazine

51

SALMAGUNDI

Colgate celebrated the legacy of former football head coach Dick Biddle by dedicating Biddle Way, Biddle Plaza, and the Dick Biddle video board at Andy Kerr Stadium in the fall. Biddle Way serves as a pathway adjacent to Sanford Field House and will be used as a runway between the football locker room and the game day entrance, which is now held in Biddle Plaza. The new dedicated plaza will also host celebrations and game day events.

— Tess Dunkel ’24

Scoreboard

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

For how many years did Dick Biddle serve as head coach at Colgate?

How many Coach of the Year awards did he win?

In which three areas does he hold first-place records?

How many Patriot League titles did he earn?

What year did Colgate football compete in the NCAA Division I-AA National Championship game?

How long was his longest winning streak for the Raiders?

Where did Biddle play college football? What position did he play?

96 Colgate Magazine Winter 2022

Clipped From the Colgate Maroon, March 1, 1917

Professor Goodhue Gives Some Causes for Rise in Prices “Prices have risen 48% in the past two years and a half,” said Professor E.W. Goodhue.... “The man with the salary of $3,000 a few years ago needs $3,800 today to maintain his standard of living….

“In seeking for causes in the rise of prices we must differentiate between the general and the local rise in prices. Local advance is probably due to submarine warfare, which has brought a great piling up of goods and commodities at the waterfronts, and the warehouses in New York are full to overflowing, necessitating the use of freight cars for storage….

“America is paying part of the price for war in the form of higher prices of all our goods…. Another reason is the extravagance of our people. In a period of prosperity people are less careful than normally. It is rather the psychology of prosperity, and this increases the domestic demand. In all cases where demand increases and the supply does not keep pace with the demand, the price will go up. Here, again, some speculators tend to take advantage of the situation and force higher prices by claiming a shortage in the commodity….

“Another very important reason for the rise in prices during the past two years and a half is the increase in the gold supply of the country, our net importation amounting to between $800 million and $900 million. This gold goes to the bank where it forms a basis for new credit, which makes rates on loans low, encourages borrowing, and hence increases buying power. As soon as the war is over, there will be a readjustment, demand will fall off, and exorbitant prices will be lowered. However, in the future a somewhat higher level of prices is likely to prevail.”

13 Words (or fewer) ↑ Submit your clever caption of 13 words (or fewer) for this vintage Salmagundi photo to magazine@colgate.edu or attn: Colgate Magazine, 13 Oak Dr., Hamilton, NY 13346. Winners receive a Colgate Magazine tote bag and will be announced next issue.

Winter 2022

Colgate Magazine

97

13 Oak Drive Hamilton, NY 13346-1398

In This Issue

Reunite with residence hall gal pals from 1974 p.68

Scoop sediment on the shores of an Icelandic glacier p.25

Hit the road with truck driver Shoshi SternRobbins ’19 p.92

Connect alumni of color through a new podcast p.80

Test your knowledge of legendary coach Dick Biddle p.96

Dine at the new Seven Oaks Clubhouse p.23

Piggyback ride down the slopes and fall in love p.94

Snap a selfie with Kenny G. p.40

Volunteer as a phlebotomist in an NYC hospital p.15

Coordinate a dance cardio video with Usher p.87

Capture a rare Florida panther on film p.51

Personalize your casket online p.49

jill calder

Turn plastic bottles into T-shirts p.50