Colgate Magazine — Spring 2021 by Colgate University

SPRING 2021

PLACES OF IMAGINATION The history of campus spaces and the people behind their names P.34

Feature

Aging, supporting others, and finding commonalities P.26 Discover

Has There Ever Been Life on the Red Planet? P.20

Endeavor

Connecting Science and Sport P.53

look Professor Anthony Chianese (pictured holding the pipet) and his organic chemistry students perform experiments to identify unknown chemical compounds. Students (L to R): Kristen Mast ’23, Paige Halverson ’23, Edward Grabov ’23, and Melissa Gonzalez ’23

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

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 1

Contents

SPRING 2021 President’s Message

Letters

A Mystery Below the Galápagos Professor Karen Harpp and colleagues study intriguing chemical differences in volcanoes.

Know Difference

Somebody to Lean On Different generations support each other through the course of life.

To challenge the ways ableminded people perceive those with intellectual disabilities, Professor Ashley Taylor asks: Who is deemed to be a producer of knowledge?

Setting Sail After restoring a 1974 steel boat, Kelsey Bonham ’22 embarks on a seafaring adventure.

Taking a Stand Kathryn Bertine ’97 leads the way in opening the Tour de France to female cyclists.

Scene

Colgate News 10

Discover

Has There Ever Been Life on the Red Planet? To better understand Mars’ planetary history, Professor Joe Levy analyzes its glaciers.

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‘People Are People First’ John Willis ’78 works with individuals who have different abilities to help them achieve their highest degree of independence.

One Molecule at a Time William Rosencrans ’19 researches how problems with mitochondria are related to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Dana Arts Center

Places of Imagination The history of campus spaces and the people behind their names

Studying Cells in Sync A common genetic pattern called paired genes may be critical to an organism’s development, poses Professor Ahmet Ay.

Rapid Response From prevention to vaccine development, alumni working across the sciences have been facing the pandemic head-on.

illustration: angelo dolojan; photography: mark diorio (DANA ARTS CENTER)

Voices

Endeavor

The Shop Around the Corner

Vice President for Communications Laura H. Jack

At a time when storefronts are suffering, Stephanie Goldstein ’97 maintains customer loyalty at her Manhattan boutique.

Managing Editor Aleta Mayne Assistant Editor Rebecca Docter

Communications Director Mark Walden

Connecting Science and Sport

Chief Creative Director Tim Horn

Through his virtual training center, Chris Case ’99 helps athletes get fitter and faster.

Art Director Karen Luciani

Designer Katriel Pritts

‘Indifying’ the Industry Here to revolutionize the music business: Shav Garg ’15.

University Photographer Mark DiOrio

Britta Von Oesen ’03

Production Assistant Kathy Jipson

Alumni News

Salmagundi

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Contributors: Gordon Brillon, web content specialist; Daniel DeVries, media relations director; Sara Furlong, advancement communications manager; Jason Kammerdiener ’10, web manager; Katherine Laube, art director; Brian Ness, video journalism coordinator; John Painter, director of athletic communications; Kristin Putman, social media strategist Printed and mailed from Lane Press in South Burlington, Vt. Colgate Magazine Volume L Number 3

illustration: mercedes deBellard

A Troubadour’s Humanitarian Legacy Jason Chapin ’86 remembers his famous father, Harry Chapin, in a new documentary.

My students have brought me the greatest joys of my life. And they are so faithful. Professor Richard Sylvester (April 3, 1933–Nov. 24, 2020) p. 70

Cover: McGregory Hall was named after Joseph F. McGregory who, during his 46 years of teaching (beginning in 1883), helped shape the University’s science program. Photo by Mark DiOrio. For more on the history and people behind campus spaces, see p. 34.

Colgate Magazine is a quarterly publication of Colgate University. Online: colgate.edu/magazine Email: magazine@colgate.edu Telephone: 315-228-7407 Change of Address: Alumni Records Clerk, Colgate University, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346-1398 Telephone: 315-228-7453 Opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by the University, the publishers, or the editors. Colgate University does not discriminate in its programs and activities because of race, color, sex, pregnancy, religion, creed, national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, physical or mental disability, age, marital status, sexual orientation, veteran or military status, predisposing genetic characteristics, domestic violence victim status, or any other protected category under applicable local, state, or federal law. For inquiries regarding the University’s non‑discrimination policies, contact Marilyn Rugg, Associate Provost for Equity and Diversity, 13 Oak Drive, Hamilton, NY 13346; 315-228-7288.

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 3

President’s Message A Sense of Place will see the refurbishment and expansion of Olin Hall to house the Robert Hung Ngai Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative and the creation of the Benton Center for Technology and Innovation in what we now call the Middle Campus. These are just the first of the projects. Others will include:

⚫ The Upper Campus. With the removal of Gate House and 113 Broad Street, we will have to construct residence halls to house a significant number of students up on the Hill, near the main academic quadrangles.

his issue of Colgate Magazine presents “Places of Imagination” — the histories of those spaces on campus that are special, that live somewhere in the memory. These are the locations that resonate even after years of being away from campus. It is impossible to think about Colgate without thinking of these corners and quadrangles. In fact — far more than is the case at most campuses — Colgate has a certain powerful placeness that seems almost definitional. The combination of Taylor Lake, the long sweeping fields up to the upper campus, and the stone buildings ascending upward with their cupolas creates a distinct environment that shapes not only memory, but also experience. And the weather. Always the weather. Can you really think of your time at Colgate without thinking of the weather on this Hill and the snow piling up against stone buildings? Campuses should be beautiful (Name an important college or university in the world that isn’t.). Beauty matters, perhaps far more than we know, or are willing to acknowledge. Sometimes it can seem odd, or potentially frivolous, to state that a campus should be beautiful. With all that is going on in the world, or that is wrong with it, why focus on appearance? We face so many problems, both here and in the world, that any attention paid to the beauty of the campus might seem like an effort misspent. It is not. Our built environment shapes how we move about, how we relate to one another, how we connect. And, as this edition of this magazine shows, it shapes memory. It is part of the education of every Colgate student. In the years ahead, we will witness a significant rebuilding, refurbishing, and reimagining of this campus, and thus of Colgate itself. With recent, extremely generous gifts from Robert H.N. Ho ’56, H’11 and Dan Benton ’80, H’10, P’10, we

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⚫ The Middle Campus. In the area of the campus that extends from Case-Geyer to Dana (what is currently a mismatch of mid– and late–20th-century buildings), a new academic quadrangle will emerge that will house Colgate’s programs in arts, creativity, and innovation, as well as our entrepreneurship program. ⚫ The Lower Campus. Currently, Colgate juniors and seniors live in a jumbled array of housing options, ranging from large houses on Broad Street to the apartment complexes along College Street. Can we imagine this part of Colgate appearing as an inclusive part of the campus? ⚫ The Athletics Campus. Reid Athletic Center was built when Colgate was not coed, when we sponsored fewer than a dozen sports, and when the NCAA had yet to array itself into divisions. It is now wholly inadequate for the level of achievement we have seen — and now regularly expect — of our athletics teams. It is also profoundly unattractive. This building, which announces that one has arrived at the campus from the south, must reflect the caliber of our program. We also must take care of the environment, minimizing our footprint on the landscape and encouraging new ways of moving toward and about the campus. We will make these changes as resources allow. And, importantly, we will be guided by the beauty of this campus and our obligation to honor our first two centuries, while planning this next one. One of the challenges of thinking about a campus for a new century is to think how best to honor the look and the feel of existing buildings and quadrangles, while also moving the institution forward. We learned we could do this with Burke and Jane Pinchin halls. We will continue to seek to get this right. The places of imagination of our Colgate grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be built by us today.

— Brian W. Casey

Our built environment shapes how we move about, how we relate to one another, how we connect.

Letters Hat Trick I enjoyed reading the article “Match Made in Hamilton” in the most recent issue (winter 2021, p. 28). My sisters, Christi Curtin ’90 McCarthy and Susan Curtin ’91 Gouldin, and I are included in the count of known Colgate marriages. All three of us are alums who married Colgate guys. We three all played club ice hockey (no varsity team in the ’80s), so I guess this is our own personal “hat trick” of marriages. Vicki Curtin ’87 Karamanoukian Remembering Bert Levine ’63 In response to “From Politician to Professor: Bertram J. Levine ’63” (winter 2021, p. 64): While Colgate’s Washington Study Group (WSG) is well known and respected, the 1993 WSG, of which I was a member, had two additional things in its favor that year. First, it was President Clinton’s inauguration and first 100 days in office. Second, and no less important, Bertram J. Levine ’63 led the WSG that year. We soon realized, and better appreciated over time, that Professor Levine (“Bert” to those who knew him) was uniquely positioned to leverage his contacts and friendships for the benefit of the WSG’s 13 students. Bert managed to score tickets to the presidential inauguration as well as tickets to the first-ever MTV inaugural ball. You can imagine how excited 13 college kids were to attend these historic events. In addition to the rigors of the two courses Bert taught and the internships he arranged for us in the executive and legislative branches, Bert generously shared his time and wisdom about law, politics, family, and the ’gate with his students while enjoying, for example, a game at Camden Yards, a day at

Six Flags, as well as the many dinner parties he arranged. Bert, ever the lawyer by training and background, placed a premium on preparation and effective communication, with listening being just as important or more so than speaking in Bert’s estimation. Bert beamed when a member of our WSG asked a notable Washington figure an insightful and thoughtprovoking question that brought credit to the ’gate. The 1993 WSG was a transformative life experience, and we are all better to have known Bert and learned the ways of Capitol Hill under his tutelage. In addition to his family, Bert leaves a lasting legacy of alums who are forever grateful and look forward to paying things forward in support of our alma mater. John N. Vagianelis ’93, P’24

Social media responses to “Part and Parcel” (winter 2021, p. 18), which highlighted Colgate’s mailroom: Memories! One of the most important pieces of snail mail of my life was delivered to me there: news I’d been awarded a Watson fellowship and would spend the year after graduation in India. Amy Allocco ’97 I was 2065 way back in 1983! Maggie O’Connor ’87

Box 937, 1976–80. Still remember the combo. Robert Musiker ’80 Link to the outside world. 2081 from ’76 to ’80. Visited in 2019, fond memories. Tassey Russo ’80

Omission in Coed Issue It was a pleasure to read all those stories and profiles highlighting the first women (students and professors) at Colgate (autumn 2020). It was especially enlightening that the articles highlighted the experiences of women of color. Their stories — and the particular challenges they faced during the early years (decades?) of coeducation — have often been overlooked and minimized in prior accounts. All that said, I confess I was disappointed by the omission — even in the full-page timeline — of any mention of the 1976 founding of Bolton House, the first women’s center at Colgate and the first all-women’s University residence on what was then Fraternity Row. I was lucky enough to live in that house in its first year, 1976–77, and I’m forever grateful to the classmates of mine, our freshman year Resident Advisor Colleen Ranney ’77, and others, who had the foresight and the moxie to advocate for converting 84 Broad Street into a vibrant and cozy living and learning community for women when we moved off the freshman hill. Students of that era may still remember the Harvest Supper and dedication ceremony we hosted during the fall 1976 Homecoming weekend to celebrate our place in the Colgate firmament. (The Bolton House story is similarly overlooked in Becoming Colgate, although that book detailing the college’s history does feature two pictures of the house, including one of the door to a room that happens to have been mine.) When we moved in that first fall, we had no idea that so many of the friendships we

would make there would last us through generations — and even carry us through a pandemic. Today, we understand how special that experience was. In its time, Bolton House represented something very special to Colgate too. And that’s a history that should be forever remembered. Goldie Blumenstyk ’79 Editor’s note: To learn more about the history of Bolton House, see “Places of Imagination” on p. 34 in this issue.

Coeducation Cover The autumn 2020 cover was a perfect choice to celebrate the first coeducational class in 1970. Liz Frazier ’73 was a bright, multi-talented, gracious, and beautiful person. And I have no doubt that she still is. Bruce Vogelsang ’67

Colgate Magazine wants to know: What was your favorite Colgate moment? Was it an intellectually fulfilling time with a professor, an Outdoor Education experience, a life-changing interaction with another student or graduate? Write to us: magazine@ colgate.edu.

To share your thoughts on this issue, email magazine@colgate.edu, or connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 5

Adventure

Setting Sail A student restores an old steel boat and embarks on a seafaring journey.

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Derek Cousemaker

Voices

y dad bought a sailboat when I was young, and we learned to sail together. Those years of experience taught me a lot about boats. At the time of this writing, I’ve almost finished restoring a 1974 Dutch Seahawk 31 ocean cruiser, with the goal of taking a long-distance trip — something I’ve always wanted to do. This process has taught me a lot, but one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that things don’t always go as planned. Originally, I had a very different trip in mind from the one I’m on now. The idea hatched last winter break when I was accepted into a Colgate-led study abroad program in Trinidad. My dad — knowing my lifelong dream — suggested, “the following summer, you could sail home.” Although I know a lot about sailing, I’d never learned about all of the other things that are important when you’re doing a long-term trip. I thought, “If I’m going to be by myself 1,000 miles from home, I should know how to fix my lights, plumbing, and engine.” I figured the best way to learn would be to buy a fixer-upper boat and spend the summer working on it. Once finished, I was either going to have a friend bring it down to Trinidad and Tobago or have it sent down with a paid captain, so that I could take it back up after the abroad program. That was the plan before COVID-19 was a factor. When campus closed during the spring 2020 semester, I came home to Washington, D.C. This seemed like a good opportunity to jump-start my plan a few months early, so I began looking at classifieds and driving around marinas to look for a good boat — something in the 30- to 40-foot range, with stability but not too slow, and generally seaworthy. Through odd circumstances, I ended up finding the boat that I would later name Little Wing. My family was selling our farmhouse in southern Maryland, and the buyer wanted to know if the tractor was included in the sale. My dad said, “We can make a trade. Do you have a boat?” Surprisingly, the buyer did, and it happened to be the size I was looking for. The previous owner had bought the boat about 20 years prior, lived on it for five years, and then put it up on land. Neglecting it for 15 years, he had locked the cabin and lost the key. During the buying process, I saw the outside, but we had to close the contract before we could see the inside of the boat. I thought, “I’m probably not going to get another opportunity for (what is to me) a free boat, so let’s do it.”

One of the quirky things about the boat is that it is steel — which is rare. I know a decent amount about wooden boats. I know a decent amount about fiberglass boats. But, before getting Little Wing, I’d never done anything with steel sailboats. I probably would have been more terrified of the project if I knew more about what I was getting into. I started working on it in April, with my dad’s help. In the beginning, the work was mainly scrubbing and power washing. It had a lot of pine needles and old moldy gear to get rid of. I made long lists, going through every corner and noting things that needed a lot of attention. Then I decided the best order to tackle those things. One of the most challenging parts was replacing the original 1974 diesel engine, which was rusted from the inside. It weighed about 500 pounds, so my dad and I devised our own crane system to lift it out of the boat and swing it over the side. That was a nail-biter. When the new one came in, it was half the weight, but we still had to use the crane to lower it down, align it, and attach it properly. This was in July, with temperatures around 100 degrees. I slid into the very small space behind the engine, and after 10 hours, we finally got it aligned. But, looking at it, we realized something was very wrong. Although we had ordered the correct transmission, the wrong one was delivered; so we had to do the whole thing again with the right transmission. Because the boat is steel, every square inch had to be painted to protect it from rust. Over the course of several months, I sanded all the paint and repainted it below the waterline, above the waterline, on the decks, and in all the storage compartments inside. Boat paints are super toxic, so I had to wear a gas mask and a full body suit. Hopefully, the boat’s going to now stay painted for at least 10 years.

This process has taught me a lot, but one of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that things don’t always go as planned.

My dad hadn’t had experience with steel boats either, so we’ve had to do research along the way. There are forums of sailors online that have answers to questions about anything and everything. I also spent a lot of time on the phone with distributors and wandering around marina shops to ask questions. But if we ran into a problem, a lot of figuring things out just came down to sitting on it for a while. That’s part of why it took so long; we had to find some creative solutions. When study abroad trips were canceled, I decided to take a leave of absence and keep working on the boat. This has been my most consuming activity since April. In the peak of July, when there was a lot of daylight, my dad and I would wake up at 4 a.m. and work until 10 p.m. It hasn’t all involved hard manual labor — a lot of it is going to the hardware store five times a day or going to Bed Bath & Beyond to find a way to organize my kitchen. We were finally ready to put the boat in the water for the first time at the end of July. I was so paranoid. “Anything could go wrong,” I thought. “After months of work, the boat might just sink at the dock, and I’d be devastated.” Beforehand, I went through to double-check everything — including the valves, to make sure they were closed. The boat was lowered into the water, and when I got on, I saw a fire hose of water rushing from the forward cabin and there was water over the floorboards. I ran outside and yelled for them to pick the boat up again. Taking a closer look at one of the valves, I realized the handle was on backward. So every time I had checked to make sure it was closed, it was actually open. In addition to study abroad programs being canceled, my plan to travel to Trinidad and Tobago became complicated because of the restrictions regarding quarantining and the cost of testing in every country I’d have to pass through along the way. My backup plan is the Florida Keys. I’ll be taking the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway to Florida, which allows me to travel more than 1,000 miles down the coast without entering the ocean. The entire one-way trip will probably take me two or three months. If things work out, I’ll have a few months to sail around before heading back in time to avoid hurricane season and start my senior year at Colgate. I’m really excited to go to places I haven’t been before, and to be in charge of my own boat. It’s exciting that this boat is mine; if I make a mistake, it’s my fault — or if it’s successful, it’s also on me.

— By Kelsey Bonham ’22, as told to Aleta Mayne

→ A music major who plays the guitar, she named her boat Little Wing after the Jimi Hendrix song. → Also an environmental geography major, she received the Kevin Williams ’10 Memorial Fellowship through the geography department. → She has almost 190,000 followers on TikTok. Bonham’s videos about her boat quickly became popular and even scored her a free boat cleaning in Fort Lauderdale. → Wildlife: “I’ve been seeing lots of dolphins since entering the southern half of North Carolina, and they like to follow the boat and play with the wake.” → Bonham doesn’t motor or sail overnight, so she docks Little Wing. Favorite stop so far: “a tiny dock in the middle of the Great Dismal Swamp, just south of the Virginia-North Carolina border. The swamp was gorgeous, even in the winter.” → Meals she’s been eating: “A lot of pasta; really, anything that has a lot of carbs and protein. It’s surprising how much energy is required to just stand in the cold for 10 hours.” → You won’t find any bananas in Bonham’s food supply; the fruit is considered bad luck on boats.



Bonham departed on Jan. 5. Follow her journey on Instagram @littlewing_sailing. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 7

Memoir

Taking a Stand Kathryn Bertine ’97 leads the way in opening the Tour de France to female cyclists.

hen someone steps into an advocacy role and challenges the system, what takes place behind the scenes? That’s the question Kathryn Bertine ’97 addresses in her new book, STAND: A memoir on activism. A manual for progress. What really happens when we stand on the front lines of change (2021). Bertine “stumbled into this world of activism” when she noticed the vast gender inequities in road cycling. She’d discovered the sport while on assignment for ESPN in 2006 and, realizing her potential to perform competitively, she continued training. “Women don’t have access to many races that men do, and for the races where we have

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access, the pay scale is completely different,” she says. “The women also have shorter distances in cycling. All of these antiquated things made my journalism brain ask ‘Why is it like this?’ “That’s when it kicked into gear: Maybe we can change the system.” Bertine decided to take on the highestranking professional cycling competition in the world: Tour de France. The owners, Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), ignored her initial attempts, so Bertine developed a more comprehensive attack plan: obtain a professional cycling contract in order to have more clout, use her voice as a journalist, and build a team of allies. In 2012, the steps of Bertine’s plan fell into place. She signed her first pro contract with Team Colavita. Then, she created a documentary on women’s cycling, which also served as informal qualitative research to gauge people’s interest in a women’s Tour de France. And, she reached out to some of the biggest female stars in the sport to “create a pressure group” and launched a petition to ASO for women’s inclusion. Bertine’s activism culminated in a

groundbreaking day. She competed in the first La Course by Le Tour de France in 2014 with her team, Wiggle-Honda Pro Cycling, at age 39 — “proving there are certain sports where women do excel as they age,” she says. The timing, however, could not have been worse; her personal life was crashing down around her. “If you believe you can change the world, you have to understand that your personal world is also something that can change,” says Bertine, who was in the initial stages of a divorce as she was experiencing the biggest day of her life. “It was a wide-open awakening that activism is not just a day job, it’s entwined with our personal lives. If we go through something devastating, it absolutely affects our work on the activism front lines and vice versa.” Bertine describes her overwhelming yet victorious personal journey of advocacy in the following intro to her new book, STAND, which is part memoir/part manual. The book offers a window into Bertine’s vulnerability — but, most importantly, sets out “to remind people that we’re all capable of effecting change. We all have the power to make a difference.”

Kris Hanning

voices

voices The most pivotal day of my journey in activism went by way too fast, no matter how hard I try to slow the incalculable speed of memory. July 27, 2014. Flashes of color, noise, and blurry people as crowds pressed against the cycling barriers lining the Champs-Élysées. Wind in my ears and the whir of gears as we encircled the Arc de Triomphe. Pounding heart and burning lungs in sync with the peloton of women around me. We were racing at the Tour de France. A race that once banned women. For the last five years, I’d taken up arms — alongside fellow athletes and supporters around the world — against the discriminatory regulations and the bureaucratic dinosaurs that barred us from the roadways of France while men competed in the most iconic cycling race in the world. Finally, on this momentous day, here we were: 125 female professional cyclists in the heart of Paris, racing down the cobblestones of the Champs-Élysées. I reveled in every moment of our prodigious, triumphant day. Inside, though, I was cracking. A photographer snapped a picture of me on my bike that day — appearing invincible, victorious, joyful, and as though I had my stuff together as I rolled toward the start line of the inaugural La Course by Tour de France. All smiles! All strength! All confidence! All lies. What cannot be seen in that photograph are the tears streaming down behind my glasses. Beneath my glove, the wedding ring I cannot bear to take off. The fractures and fissures deep within. My body, strong. My soul, lost. I am weak, empty, scared, scarred, scripted, rehearsed, and acting triumphant, fulfilled, confident, collected. In the fleeting pause between each cobblestone, despair seeps through the cracks of stillness and movement. On the outside, I am a warrior for justice. Inside, stone-cold and broken. That day, the weight of worthlessness consumed me. Hiding it seemed better. So I wore the historic victory of our presence at the Tour de France like a mask over the private, ugly pain of advocacy. When I sat down to write this story — about what we achieved for women’s equality that day — I thought: People don’t want to read about worthlessness. The Brokenness. The Emptiness. Better to skip

that stuff. Vulnerability isn’t important. It took me five years to find the courage to disagree. To write about creating change takes data, and I had plenty of that. But to write about activism requires a mirror. And a steel gut. And a box of tissues. And a reckoning with Vulnerability. In 2019 I taped the photograph of myself, on the bike in Paris, above my computer. As I sat down to write, the woman in the photograph whispered from under her mask: You want to talk about what it takes to make change happen? You want to stop throwing away first drafts? Fine. Then start writing about what really happens when we stand up and fight for what we believe. All of it. What happened in public. What happened in private. About your plan to walk in the woods and not come out. Write about what we need to talk about in our culture, our society, right now, today. That’s how change happens. Facts, schmacts. That’s not enough. Remember what Quixote said? “Facts get in the way of truth.” You’ve got plenty of facts. Now bring in the truth. If you want to write anything worthwhile and meaningful about activism, then you’re going to need to step onto that terrifyingly thin tightrope of vulnerability strung across the abyss of truth and authenticity. Ready? No. Ready? Nope. Ready? Ooof. Okay, Voice. Here we go... We need to talk about what really happens when we stand up and fight for what we believe. We need to talk about the nasty underbelly of activism. And its beautiful, beautiful wings. We need to talk about the myth of strength, the truth of masks, and the dark side of progress. We need to talk about being broken. Because the universal truth of adulthood is that we’re all a little bit broken. We need to look closely at photographs and wonder about what isn’t there, and shine a light into the cracks and caves of all the things we cannot see. We don’t all need to be activists. But we all do need to talk about how to support those who are out there standing on the front lines of Change. We need to stop thinking that happy people don’t carry the weight of despair. We

STAND also includes: • A brief history of women in cycling • Bertine’s career as senior editor at ESPN • A harrowing look behind the scenes of sports team management • An exploration of depression and mental health • A manual for getting started in activism

need to check in on our strongest friends and ask how they’re really doing. We need to tell those who have their stuff together that it’s okay to Come Undone. We need to talk about demons; ours and others’. We need to talk about suicide. We need to ask Why and embrace How, so we can be the Who, What, and Where if someone needs us. Even if they don’t ask. We need to talk about the frailty of strength and the armor of vulnerability. No, I don’t have those mixed up. We need to talk about divorce. We need to talk about divorce. We need to talk about it twice because there are two. The one we go through in public and the one we go through in private. We need to talk about pain. And how to channel it. We need to talk about sensitivity. And how to unchain it. We need to talk about the wardrobe of masks, and when to wear them. Or not. We need to talk about depression until we cry tears of laughter from the sweet release of authenticity when we say, out loud, how truly bad it is. We need to laugh. Not just because it feels good, but because Humor is the golden chariot of activism, and laughter is how we hail a cab through the ugly, gridlocked traffic on the road to Progress. We need to talk about demons, again. Not just talk about them, but to them. We need to talk to our inner beasts until we can look them straight in the eyes, pet their scaly hides, throw a saddle across their razored spines, grab tight the reins, and ride those crazy ogres wherever we so choose. Because we can choose. We need to stop trying to slay our demons and start building stables. We need to talk about how Activism just might be the great big barn where beasts and demons grow into Change and Progress. We need to understand the reality and consequence of what happens when we stand, lead, and fight. We need to talk about it all. At least I do. How activism bore me, broke me, rebuilt me and became my cornerstone of Self. Stepping onto the tightrope of vulnerability, I decided to write, because standing up and speaking out matters. And also, this: I was lost for a long time, and I needed to write myself home. To figure stuff out. To find peace and clarity. To lock eyes with authenticity. To snuggle with my demons. To confront truth. To help others plot their route into the wilds of activism. To maybe help us all rise. To finally answer the question... Yes, our struggles are worth the journey. At least I’ve got that much figured out.

— Kathryn Bertine ’97 is an author, activist, filmmaker, public speaker, and retired professional athlete. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 9

SCENE Admission

Applications Increase 102%

olgate received an alltime record number of applications for admission, shattering all previous records in the history of this two-century-old liberal arts college. As the deadline for applying to the Class of 2025 closed on Jan. 15, a total of 17,392 prospective students had applied for admission — a remarkable 102.6% increase over the previous year. This record

Students admitted into the Class of 2025 received a video card with a congratulatory message from President Casey, pencils engraved with “Deo ac Veritati,” and six scenic campus postcards — in addition to their acceptance letter and a handwritten note.

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year also includes major growth in applications from students of color, students in the Southeast, and those hailing from countries outside of the United States. An early data review also points to an overall increase in the academic quality of applications compared to previous years. For a sense of scale, the previous application record was set in 2019, when Colgate received 9,951 applications for the Class of 2023. Gary Ross, the Jones and Wood Family Vice President for admission and financial aid, says he expected to see some increase in applications this year due to a number of initiatives set in motion during the past two years, but to see an increase of greater than 100% was a shock. “It is just outstanding.”

Ross says a number of factors led to the increase, including changing how Colgate seeks out prospective students early in the college search process, moving to a pilot test-optional policy, introducing a No-Loan Initiative for families with an income of $125,000 or less, broad national media coverage of how the University has handled a return to in-person learning during the pandemic, and a new partnership with QuestBridge. Dean of Admission Tara Bubble says she firmly believes it all comes down to data: “It was all about managing our prospective student base and building on the number and quality of interactions.” Ross says another factor was Colgate’s quick response in March 2020 to online recruiting.

“The offices of admission and communications teamed up to begin very successful programs for virtual outreach to then high school juniors,” Ross says. “It worked.” Colgate hosted more than 120 webinars based on topics ranging from financial aid and food at Colgate, to what it’s like in the classroom and enjoying the winter in central New York. “Colgate representatives also transitioned from traditional inperson school visits and college fairs to participate and meet with students during more than 1,000 virtual events throughout the fall,” Associate Dean and Communication Coordinator for Admission Dan Shanley says. “Admission officers met with about 7,800 prospective students through virtual engagement. While we missed the opportunity to connect with prospective students and colleagues in person, our team was more than ready and willing to ensure that those connections still happened — and with the geographic barriers of physical travel broken down, those conversations happened at more schools, in more regions, and with more students than ever before.” — Dan DeVries

mark diorio

Linsley Museum

A Lasting Forest

arbled with rich garnet, amber, and gold tones, a collection of petrified wood embellishes the slope alongside the Ho Science Center. Shining with a glossy luster, the pieces almost seem like man-made sculptures — but they are millions-of-years-old geological wonders. The Petrified Woods exhibition, presented by the Robert M. Linsley Geology Museum and geology department, began showing this spring. Petrification occurs when trees and woody vegetation are buried in mud or volcanic ash. Over thousands of years, mineral-rich waters infuse the wood. Its cells are slowly replaced by silica, which hardens into opal or quartz. “The colors of each piece of wood come from impurities of metals,

like iron, manganese, and cobalt,” explains Rich April, the Dunham Beldon Jr. Professor of geology emeritus. He and Di Keller, senior lecturer in geology, are the Linsley curators who coordinated the exhibition. For April, the standout specimen is a black beauty from the island of Java in Indonesia. Buried in the ash of a volcanic eruption approximately 20 million years ago, the mostly black tree trunk is now lined with white stripes of pure silica. He calls the piece “sheer magnificence.” Keller’s favorite is a 700-pound fossil stump from 385 million years ago. It was discovered in Gilboa, N.Y., (only approximately 75 miles east of Colgate) in “the oldest known petrified forest,” as described in 1927 by Winifred Goldring, the first woman in the United States to be appointed as a state paleontologist. “There’s just something about the textures on it, and there’s an iridescent

play of colors in some areas because of different minerals that are oxidizing out,” Keller says. “And I love the story of it too,” she adds, referring to Goldring’s accomplishments as a female geologist. Also in the exhibition: three brown and tan slices from Madagascar, as well as 11 pieces from lands surrounding Arizona’s Petrified Forest National Park. “Most of the rainbow-colored petrified wood that you see in the United States comes from that area,” April says. He and Keller began organizing the exhibition last spring when they realized University museums would likely be closed for a while due to the pandemic. On the heels of Linsley’s Bicentennial exhibition, Petrified Woods began taking shape. As new trees were being planted on campus in preparation for Colgate’s third century, this exhibition represented “a lasting forest,” Keller notes. In addition, “it seemed appropriate to have an exhibit that would show Colgate’s beauty and perseverance through some very difficult times,” April says. The two put the finishing touches on the exhibition in November — just in time for snow to blanket campus and cover their hard work. But, this spring, as the snow melted, the creations gradually began to show themselves. April says: “It’s making its debut by nature’s hand.” — Aleta Mayne

13 bits 1 The Biden administration appointed Jung Pak ’96 as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.

2 “Turtle Supreme,” which doubled as a fully functional quinzhee (snow hut), won the student snow sculpture competition.

3 Bob Ross paint by numbers was one “Coop Kit” option for students’ entertainment during January quarantine.

4 758 hours were volunteered by staff and faculty members to help students move in for the spring semester.

5 In its first year, Colgate’s no-loan initiative awarded more than $1.5 million to students.

6 The Council on Foreign Relations awarded an international affairs fellowship to LeRoy Potts ’85 for 2021–22.

mark diorio

EVENT

“The women of my class were absolutely amazing. They didn’t think of themselves as pioneers in any way and integrated into the community in a great fashion and really contributed so much. Anyone looking back at it would say the University thrived because women came to Colgate.” — Gloria Borger ’74, H’14, P’10, CNN’s chief political analyst, spoke in March as part of Colgate’s 50 years of coeducation celebration.

363 Colgate alumni have served in the Peace Corps, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

▼ Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 11

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▼ 8 Don Vaughan, the Don Vaughan Head Men’s Hockey Coach, reached a career milestone when he coached his 1,000th game at the end of 2020.

MEET CHANDLER WASHINGTON ’23 Intended major: economics Intended minors: computer science/political science Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif. Activities: Student Government Association, Debate Society Benton Scholar

9 Professor Ephraim Woods and students built an apparatus to understand sunlight-driven reactions in Earth’s atmosphere.

11 More than 40 alumni hosted career sessions for 230+ secondyear students participating in SophoMORE Connections.

12 This year’s Dancefest, an event that usually packs the chapel with attendees, was held virtually for the first time with prerecorded performances.

from them — is really appealing,” he says. More from Washington: Campus during COVID: “It has had its ups and downs. The majority of the downs come from not being able to fully connect with what Colgate is known to be. However, getting to know the students on campus has been a huge highlight. You see the passions people have, you learn what they’re interested in, and that helps you grow as a person and as an individual.”

— Dan DeVries

Awareness

information to build confidence in authorized COVID-19 vaccines and to motivate and inspire people to collectively fight the pandemic. “The goal of the project is to help create a dialogue and understanding around COVID vaccines to help dispel the terrible misinformation that has been circulating, particularly within the most vulnerable populations,” says Janet McUlsky ’78, who works as a consultant for Reservoir Communications, which was tasked with helping to create the public education campaign.

The group also selected six other individuals with Colgate connections, including students who volunteer with the Hamilton Fire Department. Colgate faces in Count Me In include Ani Arzoumanian ’22, Pete Shelsky ’01, Neil Krulewitz ’12, Nate Freishtat ’22, Lacey Williams ’16, and Carry Hays ’80. Williams also worked with Stephen Brown ’81, a senior executive at Fox TV, to help bring on board several television personalities, including Meredith Vieira, Faith Jenkins, and Heidi Hamilton. — Dan DeVries

Count Him In

13 Kiko Galvez, the Charles A. Dana Professor of physics and astronomy, has honored Colgate with its first official patent: a method to determine the topographical charge of an optical beam.

12 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

Debate Society: “It gives you the ability to think outside the box and also understand both sides of a perspective — to understand and figure out the best argument for that.”

handler Washington ’23 is the first Colgate student to be selected for admission to the Institute for Responsible Citizenship, a twosummer program for America’s best and brightest African American male college students. Scholars in the program live together in a residence hall, work internships in their fields of interest, and participate in special seminars and professional development workshops. “The ability to connect with other exceptional, young Black men — to network and learn

new national public health effort created to foster vaccine education and combat misinformation has selected President Brian W. Casey as one of the leaders featured in the group’s social media awareness campaign. Dubbed “Count Me In,” the education project features dozens of leaders from business, media, health care, and education to provide individuals and organizations with

Student Government Association: “I feel like the biggest thing in accomplishing a goal is thinking about those around you and communicating exactly what you’re trying to do and explaining why it’s a good thing.”

mark diorio

Students were invited to perform a song, poetry, and tell jokes in their native tongues as part of ALANA’s International Mother Language Day Open Mic Night.

SCENE

Forum

‘Congress to Campus’ Event Tackles the Future of Politics

ormer congressmen Peter Smith (R-Vt.) and William Enyard (D-Ill.) participated in the “Congress to Campus Community Forum,” covering topics that ranged from campaigning and partisanship to voter suppression and term limits. The February event was organized by the Colgate Vote Project (CVP) and moderated by CVP team leaders Eliza Lloyd ’22 and Samuel Adgie ’22. During Smith’s term as a representative for Vermont (1988–90), he served on the House of Education and Labor Committee as well as the House Government Operations Committee. Education was of particular importance to him, given that, in 1970, he founded

the Community College of Vermont, a member of the Vermont state college system. Enyard became a congressman in the Illinois delegation at age 63, after a well-established career as an attorney, an Illinois National Guard military lawyer, and adjutant general of Illinois. He served on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Agriculture Committee between 2013 and 2015. Enyard classified Smith and himself as “odd ducks” in the political world, each only serving a single term and having careers largely outside of politics. As such, they framed the forum by acknowledging their abilities to honestly address issues facing politics today and discussing what they learned from their time in office. The men focused partially on how politics are changing. In the 1980s, Smith raised $22,500 for his winning campaign and $70,000 for his losing campaign two years later. By 2013, Enyard was spending $1.4 million when he first ran and $2 million on

Diversity

Meeting the Needs of Muslim and Jewish Students

wo new spaces — a Muslim prayer room and a Kosher kitchen — are helping meet the needs of an increasingly diverse student body. Located in the 110 Broad Street student residence, which serves as the Interfaith House, these new amenities enable students living and gathering on the lower campus to practice important aspects of their religions. Although Muslim students have had access to a prayer room on the garden level of Memorial Chapel, its location atop the Hill — and increased demand — pointed to a strong need to create an additional space for them on lower campus. Now, with prayer rooms on both upper and lower campuses, Muslim students will be more readily able to heed the call to prayer five times a day. The new location is accessible as early as 5:30 a.m., has a separate entrance, and includes wudu (ritual washing) stations.

his second bid for office. They related the bigger budgets to the rise of media in any given campaign’s success. “Money is one of the biggest issues of its type facing the Congress,” Smith said. The congressmen were also asked to address voter suppression and the legitimacy of mail-in ballots in light of the 2020 election controversies. “We’ve had mail-in ballots in this country since the Civil War,” Enyard said. “The first two elections that I voted in, I was on active duty in the United

Money is one of the biggest issues of its type facing the Congress.

States Air Force, and both of those ballots were cast by mail. If these Republicans who are speaking so wildly about mail-in ballots really banish mail-in ballots, do you know who it would really hurt most? Military people and students.” Enyard denounced the idea that election fraud is a systemic problem, painting fraudulent social media ads and campaign claims as a far larger issue. Smith echoed this sentiment, acknowledging the strength of the national election system and citing gerrymandering and voter suppression as its true weaknesses. While there was a certain pessimism for partisan politics built upon high-budget campaigns today, the men seemed hopeful about the potential of future congressional representatives. Smith told students: “Your generation is going to be the generation that will help us reframe… We want a healthier society where people treat each other with dignity and respect.” — Lauren Hutton ’21

Yasoob Khalid ’21, the interfaith liaison to the Office of the Chaplains, has been responsible for getting the prayer room up and running. “As a Muslim, when I first came to Colgate, I was trying to figure out what [would be] normal for me because I was plunged into this completely different way of living,” says Khalid, who is from Lahore, Pakistan, and serves as copresident of the Muslim Student Association. “In the sea of unfamiliarity, praying with my friends on campus gave me something familiar to grab on to.” The room, Khalid says, will help make the transition to campus smoother for Muslim students because it will provide a welcoming space to connect with others who have come before them, to process their experiences and gain insight from them. Another addition to Interfaith House is a dairy-only Kosher kitchen in the first-floor main dining area. Being on the lower campus provides a convenient location for students who wish to store Kosher dairy food supplies, supplementing the Kosher kitchen facilities at the Saperstein Jewish Center and the Memorial Chapel. Longer term, the University will seek to add more Kosher options to its dining services program with future renovation opportunities. “In the meantime,” says Rabbi Barry Baron, associate chaplain, “this is a great first step for Colgate in expanding Kosher food availability to students.” “In advance of the housing selection process,” University Chaplain Corey MacPherson says, “we wanted Colgate’s Muslim and Jewish students to know of these new amenities in Interfaith House as they begin considering their living options for the next academic year.” — Rebecca Downing Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 13

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Then and Now

Angela Davis Returns to Colgate Almost 47 years later: recollections and comparisons

or the fifth time in Colgate history, activist, academic, and author Angela Davis delivered a lecture for the University community when she served as the Feb. 4 keynote speaker for the 2021 Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. When Davis first visited Colgate on Sept. 16, 1974, her talk focused on prison reform — which was also a central theme in this year’s Q&A. But the atmosphere looked much different in the two events taking place almost 47 years apart. This year, approximately 800 attendees listened to Davis over Zoom. In 1974, students formed a long line from Memorial Chapel to East Hall, holding tickets that cost $1.50 each. “She had her big Afro, and she was very statuesque,” remembers Robert Gordon ’78, who was a first-year student then. “She was low key and gentle in the way she spoke. It was professorial, very intellectual.”

14 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

Those were revolutionary times, Gordon points out, citing the Vietnam War protests as well as the rise in the civil rights movement, feminism, and LGBTQ activism. At the forefront of Davis’ mind that September: the trial of several Black men who were accused of crimes related to the 1971 Attica prison uprising. That event — and the subsequent trials — exposed inhumane prison conditions and civil rights violations. In the chapel that evening, she asked audience members to become involved in their cause and for someone to head the Colgate chapter of the Attica Brothers Defense Group. Without hesitation, Gordon stood up and volunteered. “The Attica situation was something we were all aware of and something that had purpose at the time,” says Gordon, who’s since dedicated his career to the law as a judge and now partner with the Maryland firm Lerch, Early & Brewer. “We all felt it was a big moment in history. There’s right and there’s wrong, just to simplify it, and we should all be on the side of right.” Before the chapel event, Gordon attended “a more relaxed, interactive conversation” with Davis in

ALANA. This year, too, Davis spent time with students in a smaller group setting — but, of course, it took place online rather than the intimate environment of ALANA. Jaritza Núñez ’21, who says she has “always admired Angela Davis and her work,” was one of the participants in this year’s student session. Núñez was also chosen to kick off the keynote event by introducing the moderator, ALANA Director Esther Rosbrook. During that Q&A discussion, for which attendees were encouraged to submit questions, Núñez asked Davis about the future of the prison abolition movement. Davis responded: “For so long, I assumed that the work we were doing against the prison industrial complex, to build an abolitionist movement … was an aspirational expression. I don’t think we ever thought, in our wildest imagination, that abolition would enter the mainstream discourse.” But, she noted, “there is a new collective sense of the damage that racism has done to the structures of all the institutions in our society… this is a moment where we get to act on that awareness and begin to look deeply at institutions — educational institutions, health care, and of course, all the policing and prisons.” Davis added: “It gives us the capacity to ask, ‘Well, if we don’t need police in the way we usually think we do, what do we need?’” Her proposed solutions include improved police training, especially in situations where people need help, like mental health crises and domestic disputes. Having been an activist for so many decades, Davis provides a broad perspective. For Núñez, Davis’ ability to “connect past struggles to current social justice movements” particularly resonated. “Davis spoke about the need to be aware of the effects of the past and present while also thinking about the future and being aspirational about what could

be accomplished or acquired,” Núñez said in the Maroon-News. “This was an important point because if we do not allow ourselves to imagine how things need to and can change, then we are limiting our activism.” Gordon remembers, in 1974, “there was a feeling that there is going to be change in America,” he says. “In 40 years, it’ll be a dramatically different America where there won’t be any racism, or it’ll be reduced to the tiniest element,” he recalls thinking. “Of course, some of that happened, but the dream wasn’t realized.” As social justice efforts march on, Gordon says it’s meaningful to have someone like Angela Davis address the campus community and speak to students on a personal level. Looking back to his 17-yearold self as a student of color, he will never forget feeling something powerful in Davis’ presence: “like a loved human being, valued just like anybody else in this country.” — Aleta Mayne

Other appearances by Angela Davis: → Oct. 2, 1982: “Women, Race and Class,” sponsored by the Black Student Union (Brehmer Theater) → Sept. 30, 1989: “African Women and Leadership,” as part of Colgate’s observance of Black Women’s Week (Brehmer Theater) → Feb. 24, 2009: “Violence Against Women and the Ongoing Challenge to Racism and Frameworks for Radical Feminism in the 21st Century,” sponsored by Sisters of the Round Table in honor of Africana Women’s Week (Memorial Chapel) Do you remember hearing Angela Davis speak at Colgate? Write to us with your memories: magazine@colgate.edu.

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ALANA

MLK Celebration Champions Hope and Faith

o commemorate the legacy and life of civil rights leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the ALANA Cultural Center continued its annual 10-day series of events in collaboration with offices and departments across campus. The MLK celebration started on Jan. 25 with a virtual opening ceremony that showcased the voices and experiences of students and faculty and staff members. President Brian W. Casey emphasized the theme of hope and faith behind this year’s celebration. “To be on a campus is to be engaged in making one’s future,” he said. “In these times, it is to be part of making this nation’s future. Although we see endless moments of finite disappointment these days, this nation is still marked by infinite hope. Better days are ahead — this is true.” The Student Government Association President Amarachi Iheanyichukwu ’21 reflected on the losses and lessons of the past year before highlighting King’s message of empathy and introspection. “In his teachings, Dr. King sought to do more than just illustrate the moral bankruptcy of the nation,” Iheanyichukwu said. “He also hoped to inspire us to struggle toward the dream of harmonious mass prosperity that would cut through the dissonance and division that plagued and continued to plague society.” Drawing on King’s vision of unity, Iheanyichukwu discussed the significance of community in times of upheaval. “As we look toward the start of the next semester and this new year — which will no doubt bring new challenges to conquer — it is important that we maintain our hope and our faith in one

another,” she noted. “Together, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we can be ordinary people who can accomplish extraordinary things.” Throughout the week, there were panel discussions and talks headed by scholars and activists — including a keynote by civil rights activist Angela Davis. Bonnie St. John, former Paralympic skier and founder of Blue Circle Leadership, also addressed the Colgate community. Despite having her right leg amputated at age 5, St. John became the first African American to win medals in the winter Olympics. She delved into the role of political correctness in professional and personal modes of communication. “Political correctness was designed to

prevent problems,” she said. “In today’s environment … a lot of what’s happening is beyond prevention. People are clashing on differing points of view or sets of assumptions. We are starting to work more with methodologies that can help you deal with what happens after you’ve had an identity collision.” Student voices were also prioritized in this year’s speaker series. For instance, students from various multicultural organizations came together to present “Race, Class, and Culture as Colgate Students.” The speakers addressed what it feels like to be a person of color on campus, referencing the culture shock of losing communities in which their culture was heavily represented as well as difficulties related to

Fellowships

identifying as an international or low-income student. Many of them acknowledged difficulties being the only person of color in a classroom. As with many of the MLK celebration events, audience members resonated with experiences of injustice and vocalized their desire to tackle oppression at the end of the discussion. One of the event moderators, ALANA Ambassador Keilani Blas ’22, concluded: “Clearly there is a gap in which we need to humanize our students and our education system… It’s really important to make the classroom a space for everybody, an equitable space and a space of radical love.” — Lauren Hutton ’21 and Celine Turkyilmaz ’21

IN addition

Leaving the Launchpad Lauren Hutton ’21 (whose byline you’ve seen in the pages of Colgate Magazine for nearly four years) has been named as a recipient of a 2021 Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Hutton is an English and women’s studies double major from Pembroke Pines, Fla. For her Watson project, she will spend the next year learning about how sexual violence is reported around the globe and the repercussions of reportage practices on community mentalities toward sexual violence. Does the media sympathize with perpetrators or question victims’ credibility? What protocols guide sexual violence reporting, and even which survivors’ stories are told? Hutton will learn from journalists; scholars who can speak to the specific sociohistorical contexts in which a country fosters its relationship with gender dynamics, sexual violence, and the media; and survivors themselves.

Jacob Watts ’21 has been named a recipient of the Churchill Scholarship, a fully funded fellowship to attend Churchill College at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. to complete a oneyear master’s research degree. He is one of 17 students nationwide to receive the Churchill. Watts and Humberto Ochoa ’17 have been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) grant that provides support for U.S. scientific leaders of tomorrow. Five alumni were awarded NSF GRFP Honorable Mentions: John Bennett ’19, biochemistry and classics; Courtney Benoit ’17, molecular biology; Liam Friar ’15, physics; William Rosencrans ’19, physics; and Maryann Webb ’18, environmental biology and Spanish.

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 15

Scene

Men’s basketball

Second Trip to the NCAA

t was another fine showing, but Colgate’s second trip to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship ended with an 85–68 loss to third-seeded Arkansas on March 19. The 14-seed Raiders had the early nationwide viewing audience buzzing when they sprinted to a 14-point first half lead. But Arkansas turned the tables and scored the final 17 points before halftime to race into the locker room leading 36–33. Over the closing portions of both halves, the Razorbacks outscored Colgate 44–10 to outlast the upset bid and eliminate the Raiders. A key statistic in the game saw the Razorbacks forcing Colgate into a season-high 22 turnovers (previous high, 15) and outscoring the Raiders 34–15 in points-off-turnovers. The Raiders earned their ticket to the NCAA after beating Loyola and capturing their second Patriot League Championship in the last three seasons. Colgate’s final record of 14–2 ties the best season winning percentage (.875) in program history, matching the mark of 7–1 way back in 1902–03 under Head Coach Ellery Huntington. — Jordan Doroshenko

Jordan Burns ’21 (#1)

Paul McAvoy ’21 (#5) and the Raiders took on St. Lawrence in the ECAC Semifinals.

GAME HIGHLIGHTS

→ Jack Ferguson ’21

sank three 3-pointers.

→ Nelly Cummings ’22

led a balanced Colgate scoring attack with 14 points.

→ Jordan Burns ’21

added 13 points — all in the second half — while Ferguson and Jeff Woodward ’24 scored 11 apiece.

Men’s hockey

Season Ends in Overtime Thriller

espite outshooting St. Lawrence University 43–25, Colgate fell in a 5–4 overtime decision to the Saints in the ECAC Semifinals March 18. With the result, the Raiders’ season came to a close with a 6-11-5 overall record and a 5-9-4 mark in ECAC Hockey. — Jenna Jorgensen SEASON STATS

→ Colgate recorded a season high of 43 shots on goal. This was the most since Colgate’s 43 shots on goal on Nov. 9, 2019 (vs. Brown).

→ In postseason awards, Pierson Brandon ’24 collected the Best Defensive Defenseman award from the ECAC, a first in program history since the award’s inception in 1962.

→ By being named to the All-Rookie Team, Alex Young ’24

→ Josh McKechney ’21 was named to First Team All-ECAC honors, a first since 2012. He became just the 19th First Team member in program history.

→ Overall, Colgate played 14 games against teams ranked in the top 15 in the country throughout the season.

→ The Raiders graduate seven players in the Class of 2021:

Paul McAvoy, McKechney, Nick Austin, Tyler Jeanson, Trevor Cosgrove, Evan Tschumi, and Henry Marshall.

→ For the 2021–22 season, Colgate is slated to return 20 of 27 players, all four goaltenders, and four of the program’s top-5 point scorers from the 2020–21 campaign.

16 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

Bottom: Jordan Doroshenko; top: Justin Wolford

and Brandon are the first honorees to the squad since 2018. It also marks the first time since 2013 that the program has had two members on the All-Rookie Team.

scene

Women’s hockey

Competitive Quarterfinals

Bottom: Jenna Jorgensen; top: Justin Wolford

or the second time in four seasons, the Raiders advanced to the NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Championship. Unfortunately, No. 4 Colgate fell in the quarterfinals to No. 5 University of Minnesota Duluth in a 1–0 overtime contest in Erie, Pa. All three periods were incredibly competitive, and it was a thrilling defensive battle for most of the game. As overtime began, both teams recorded solid shots on goal before the Bulldogs scored at the 6:39 mark of the overtime period. Even so, it was a strong season for the Raiders, who won their first ever ECAC Hockey Championship and ECAC Hockey regular season title. They concluded 2020–21 with a 15-7-1 overall record and an 8-4-0 mark in ECAC hockey play. “I’m proud of our team. We had one of the best years you could ask for… To be the first team in program history to win the ECAC in the regular season and playoffs is something that these players will never forget,” Head Coach Greg Fargo says. “More important than that is how we got through this tough time together. A big part of that falls into the lap of our six seniors and how they led this team through a pandemic.” — Dani Pluchinsky

SEASON STATS

→ Colgate was stellar at the Class of 1965 Arena as the team posted a 10-2-0 record.

→ The team recorded

61 goals in just 23 games, with 16 skaters notching points.

→ Seven of the

Raiders’ 15 wins came against ranked opponents.

→The Raiders swept

four series, including Syracuse (Nov. 20– 21), No. 10 Quinnipiac (Jan. 9–10), No. 9/10 Clarkson (Jan. 16–18), and St. Lawrence (Jan. 22–24).

→ As the program’s

first ever ECAC Player of the Year, Danielle Serdachny ’23 led the team in points with 21 (9G, 12A) and also had three game-winning goals.

→ The Raiders earned ECAC hockey honors nine times, with Kayle Osborne ’24 being a three-time Goalie of the Week.

Track and Field

Raising the Bar

n her first collegiate track meet, Elizabeth Driscoll ’24 broke the previous Colgate indoor pole vault record with a height of 3.06 meters in March. The previous record, achieved by Hunter Filer ’18 in her senior year, was 3.05 meters. Because of the pandemic, Driscoll was unable to compete last year during her senior high school season and meet her goal of breaking her high school record. “After having lost my senior season, I set my eyes on a new goal, Colgate’s record,” she told the Maroon-News. “Imagining breaking the record is what kept me going for almost a full year.” Next up for Driscoll: overcoming Colgate’s outdoor record of 3.20 meters. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 17

SCENE

The Third-century plan Expansion

Be It Resolved

he Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative’s home — Olin Hall — is one step closer to transformative renovations. In January, Colgate’s Board of Trustees passed a resolution to advance designs created by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, LLP for the project, and construction will begin in the spring of 2022. The Ho MBBI was created with a gift of $15 million from Trustee Emeritus Robert Hung Ngai Ho ’56, H’11 in 2019, and it is a mainstay of Third-Century Plan efforts to strengthen the academic enterprise at Colgate. In this space, molecular geneticists will rub shoulders with brain scientists and linguistics experts as they engage in conversation with peers in the humanities and social sciences. “The habit of thinking, conversing, and collaborating across disciplines — this is the hallmark of the liberal arts,” says President Brian W. Casey. “The Ho MBBI will push Colgate into the frontiers of both interdisciplinary research and teaching, where reputations and accomplishments are expanded and secured.” A commitment to the liberal arts experience is essential at this moment in

the University’s history. “It is my hope that, like the Robert H.N. Ho Science Center, the benefits of the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative and expansion of Olin Hall will endure for many years into the future,” Ho says. “This area of study is very important, and the programs and new facilities will distinguish Colgate from its peers. I hope that members of the board and others will join me in providing support to ensure its success.” That support is already being reflected in new gifts to the initiative. Most recently,

New Third-Century Chairs he creation of two endowed faculty chairs will support teaching and research in areas important to The Third-Century Plan. The endowments were established through a $5 million gift from Peter Kellner ’65. “The impact of this gift is profound,” President Brian W. Casey says. “It creates a perpetual source of support for faculty positions and elevates the interdisciplinary nature of the arts and humanities at Colgate.” The Third-Century Chair in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics will recognize teaching excellence and scholarly achievements in those fields. Kellner — along with his son Erik M. Zissu ’87 and grandchildren Zoe H. Zissu ’16 and Claudia M. Hensley ’19 — created the endowment in honor of Casey, who studied philosophy, politics, and economics as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame. Kellner and his wife, Maria, also created the Peter L. ’65 and Maria T. Kellner Chair in Arts, Creativity, and Innovation. The chair demonstrates support for the Middle Campus initiative. The Kellner

18 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

— Mark Walden

Olin Hall renovations will provide a home for the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative.

Faculty

Trustee Emeritus Dr. Michael J. Wolk ’60, P’93, founder of Colgate’s Wolk Medical Conference, and his daughter, Sara Weiner ’93, dedicated $500,000 to advance interdisciplinary research and teaching within the Ho MBBI, promote engagement and collaboration with other research institutions, host visiting scholars, and launch a new conference on mind, brain, and behavior issues — featuring national and international thought leaders.

Chair will recognize the work of an outstanding scholar who explores the interplay of arts, creativity, and technology. It also reflects the Kellners’ own love of the arts. “When I heard President Casey’s speech at the Bicentennial Reunion, I knew Colgate was reaching a pivotal moment in its history,” Kellner says. “I was inspired by his vision.” Endowed faculty positions acknowledge and reward excellence in teaching and research. Also, they provide the foundation of the holders’ salaries as well as offer chair holders dedicated funds to deepen and enhance their research and teaching efforts. Chair holders will have a four-course teaching load, providing additional time for high-level scholarship and setting the stage for an eventual move to a four-course load for all faculty, aligning Colgate with the leading colleges and universities. The Third-Century Chair in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and the Peter L. ’65 and Maria T. Kellner Chair in Arts, Creativity, and Innovation bring the number of Third-Century chairs that have been funded to six. The Third-Century Plan calls for the creation of a total of 25 new endowed professorships.

— Stephanie Boland

SCENE

A trustee emeritus and member of the University’s Campaign Leadership Committee, Dan Benton ’80, H’10, P’10 has made significant investments in Colgate.

Middle Campus

A $25M Transformational Gift

mark diorio

aniel Benton ’80, H’10, P’10 has secured his place as Colgate’s most generous benefactor, with his latest gift of $25 million toward the University’s Middle Campus Plan for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation and other elements within The Third-Century Plan. “On behalf of the entire Colgate community, I thank Dan Benton for this transformational gift,” says President Brian W. Casey. “It is the latest and most profound example of Dan’s commitment to Colgate, his love of this place and its people. It reminds us that, even in this dark present, a bright future awaits.” The gift provides $20 million to construct The Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation, the anchor of a two-building, 36,800-square-foot complex on the Middle Campus to house computer science, film and media studies, theater, and dance. “I am excited to support the Middle Campus initiative at Colgate,” Benton says. “It promises to transform the University — both intellectually and physically. The Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation will become a hub for interdepartmental collaboration and experimentation. In the words of Steve Jobs, ‘It’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our hearts sing.’” Together, the two parts of the complex will include maker spaces, computer and

media object labs, studios, and new music practice rooms. Flexible performance and exhibition spaces will provide opportunities for experimentation and for exploring new modes of communication. “By placing computer science in physical proximity with creative and performing arts departments, exciting new scholarly and performance-based collaborations become possible, as do cutting-edge opportunities for team-taught and linked courses that dismantle outdated barriers between the arts and the sciences/technology,” says Lesleigh Cushing, the Murray W. and Mildred K. Finard Professor in Jewish studies and religion, who has shepherded the Middle Campus planning process in her role as an associate dean of the faculty. “The Middle Campus creates new and exciting opportunities for students to learn with their hands and bodies, to experiment with new ideas and new modes of doing things, and to collaborate with one another and the faculty. Dan’s transformational gift sets the Middle Campus in motion, and his insights have made the vision stronger and more dynamic.” The Benton Center computer labs will host coding and programming as well as digital music composition and digital photography. Students and professors entering The Benton Center and its companion buildings on the Middle Campus will find media labs for using and

interpreting old technologies and analyzing the new — as well as rehearsal and performance spaces for student music, dance, theater, spoken word, and improvisational groups. The Middle Campus will be home to architecture studios; scenic, lighting, and costume design spaces; and galleries, where students will be curators. Benton, a trustee emeritus and member of the University’s Campaign Leadership Committee, has already made significant investments in Colgate totaling nearly $50 million during the last two decades — in the Colgate Fund; the Benton Scholars program; in Career Services, where he provided leadership funding to build Benton Hall; and most recently, his first move to support the Middle Campus with an endowed chair in arts, creativity, and innovation. “In his Colgate connection and in his professional life, Dan has demonstrated a genius for identifying the key elements that will drive future success in an institution,” says Campaign Steering Committee Cochair Gretchen Burke ’81, P’11,’20. “He has supported those areas in ways that also encourage others to follow his lead.” Just as the Middle Campus will serve as a physical point of connection between the Hill and West Campus, it promises to establish new academic links between departments, curricula, and student cocurricular interests — from staging dance performances to developing entrepreneurial ventures through Thought Into Action. New technology, media, and modes of learning will serve new ideas, brought to Colgate by an expanding number of students and scholars inspired by the chance for unfettered creativity, collaboration, and mentorship. “The physical legacy of Dan’s philanthropy can be seen today on the traditional academic quadrangle with Benton Hall,” Casey says. “Future generations will see it in the newly emerging academic quadrangle with The Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation as well. His gift advances The Third-Century Plan and the Middle Campus Plan, living documents that will secure the University’s place as a leading national institution for both education and research.”

— Mark Walden

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 19

Discover High-resolution imaging of Mars’ surface suggests that debris-covered glacier deposits formed during multiple punctuated episodes of ice accumulation over long timescales.

Geology

Has There Ever Been Life on the Red Planet? Professor Joe Levy helps to better understand Mars’ planetary history.

groundbreaking new analysis of the mysterious glaciers of Mars has been published by Assistant Professor of Geology Joe Levy in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS). On Earth, glaciers covered wide swaths of the planet during the last ice age (which reached its peak about 20,000 years ago), before they receded to the poles and left behind the rocks they pushed behind. On Mars, however, the glaciers never left, remaining frozen on the Red Planet’s cold surface for more than 300 million years, covered in debris. “All the rocks and sand carried on that ice have remained on the surface,” Levy says. “It’s like putting the ice in a cooler under all those sediments.” Geologists haven’t been able to tell whether all of those glaciers formed during one massive Martian Ice Age, or in separate events throughout millions of years. Because ice ages result from a shift in the tilt of a planet’s axis (known as obliquity), answering that question could tell scientists how Mars’ orbit and climate have changed over time — as well as what kind of rocks, gases, or even microbes might be trapped inside the ice.

20 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

Levy concocted a plan to examine the rocks on the surface of the glaciers as a natural experiment. Because they presumably erode over time, a steady progression of larger to smaller rocks proceeding downhill would point to a single, long ice age event. Choosing 45 glaciers to examine, Levy acquired high-resolution images collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite and set out to count the size and number of rocks. With a resolution of 25 centimeters per pixel, “you can see things the size of a dinner table,” Levy says. Even at that magnification, however, artificial intelligence can’t accurately determine what is or isn’t a rock on rough glacier surfaces; so, Levy enlisted the help of 10 students during two summers to count and measure approximately 60,000 big

rocks. “We did a kind of virtual fieldwork, walking up and down these glaciers and mapping the boulders,” Levy says. He initially panicked when, far from a tidy progression of boulders by size, the rock sizes seemed to be distributed at random. “In fact, the boulders were telling us a different story,” Levy says. “It wasn’t their size that mattered; it was how they were grouped or clustered.” Because the rocks were traveling inside the glaciers, they were not eroding, he realized. At the same time, they were distributed in clear bands of debris across the glaciers’ surfaces, marking the limit of separate and distinct flows of ice, formed as Mars wobbled on its axis. Based on that data, Levy concluded that Mars has undergone somewhere between six and 20 separate ice ages during the

Joe Levy

Karen Harpp

past 300–800 million years. Those findings appear in PNAS, written along with six current or former students; Colgate mathematics professor Will Cipolli; and colleagues from NASA, the University of Arizona, Fitchburg State University, and the University of Texas–Austin. “This paper is the first geological evidence of what Martian orbit and obliquity might have been doing for hundreds of millions of years,” Levy says. The finding that glaciers formed over time holds implications for planetary geology and even space exploration, he explains. “These glaciers are little time capsules, capturing snapshots of what was blowing around in the Martian atmosphere,” he says. “Now we know that we have access to hundreds of millions of years of Martian history without having to drill down deep through the crust — we can just take a hike along the surface.” That history includes any signs of life potentially present from Mars’ distant past. “If there are any biomarkers blowing around, those are going to be trapped in the ice too.” At the same time, eventual explorers to Mars who might need to depend on extracting fresh water from glaciers to survive will need to know that there may be bands of rocks inside them that will make drilling hazardous. Levy and his colleagues are now in the process of mapping the rest of the glaciers on Mars’ surface, hoping that with the data they have, artificial intelligence can now be trained to take over the hard work of identifying and counting boulders. That will bring us one step closer to a complete planetary history of the Red Planet — including the age-old question of whether Mars could ever have supported life. “There’s a lot of work to be done figuring out the details of Martian climate history,” Levy says, “including when and where it was warm enough and wet enough for there to be brines and liquid water.” ● — Michael Blanding

These glaciers are little time capsules, capturing snapshots of what was blowing around in the Martian atmosphere.

Scientists — including Colgate’s Associate Professor of Physics Jonathan Levine — have expanded the capabilities of the prototype spaceflight instrument Chemistry Organic and Dating Experiment (CODEX), designed for fieldbased dating of extraterrestrial materials. The goal with CODEX is to better understand some of the outstanding questions of solar system chronology, like how long Mars was potentially habitable.

Sierra Negra volcano, Galápagos

Geochemistry

A Mystery Below the Galápagos Many island chains are formed by volcanism; they’re gradually constructed, layer by layer, from lava. By the time that molten rock erupts from a volcano, it’s already gone on a long journey that started thousands of kilometers below the Earth’s surface. Volcanic rocks are, therefore, a window into the planet’s deep interior. The go-to spot for those kinds of studies is Hawaii, says Karen Harpp, professor of geology and peace and conflict studies. But a few decades ago, scientists realized that the 50th state had thrown them a curveball: the Hawaiian chain of volcanoes is actually two chains of volcanoes, each with its own unique chemical fingerprint. That discovery revealed a lot about Hawaii’s mantle plume — the ribbon of hot, solid rock that moves upward through the Earth’s mantle, eventually producing the magma supplying the islands’ volcanoes. Rather than being homogeneous, it must be composed of two different types of rock, says Harpp. A few years ago, one of her collaborators, Dominique Weis, proposed an explanation: Hawaii’s mantle plume resembles two strands of taffy, one side fed by the lower mantle and the other side fed by a blob of atypically hot rock within that lower mantle.

Volcanoes in the Galápagos also show intriguing chemical differences, so Harpp and other researchers have long wondered whether something similar to the Hawaiian plume phenomenon was at play there. The Galápagos is a special place for Harpp — she first went there in 1990 as a graduate student and has returned pretty much every year since. Over time, Harpp has amassed a sizeable collection of volcanic rocks from the Galápagos. Harpp and Weis recently analyzed 83 of those volcanic rocks and compared their isotopic compositions with those of volcanic rocks from Hawaii. They found that some of the rocks from both locales shared the same chemistry. Those rocks, the researchers surmised, must have been formed from magma from a common source, most likely the normal lower mantle. But other rocks from the Galápagos didn’t match up with either of the two groups of Hawaiian rocks. Perhaps they formed from magma sourced from the same blob of hotter material that also nourishes one chain of Hawaii’s volcanoes, but a different side, the researchers suggested. That makes sense, says Harpp, because Hawaii lies above the northern edge of the blob, and the Galápagos lies above its eastern edge. Previous observations have indicated that this blob might be composed of ancient slabs of the Earth’s crust that sunk in subduction zones, so it’s logical that different sides of the blob would be chemically distinct. It was one of the rare unifying moments in research, says Harpp, to realize that the volcanoes of both Hawaii and the Galápagos can be described by mantle plumes with the same two-stranded structure. “One concept actually manages to explain a range of apparently disparate observations.” — Katherine Kornei

To read this full story and others, visit Colgateresearchmagazine.com. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 21

discover

Educational Studies

Know Difference What we lose when we only look through the lens of able-mindedness

olleges and universities across the country are embracing the spectrum of race, ethnicity, gender, age, and religion that makes our species varied and interesting. But one dimension that is still too rarely the object of inclusion in higher education, according to Assistant Professor of Educational Studies Ashley Taylor, is (dis)ability. Individuals with a diagnosis of intellectual disability — those determined to have low intelligence as measured by IQ and who have adaptive behaviors for navigating social and developmental contexts (as opposed to a learning disability, which concerns how someone learns) — are too often assumed not to be “knowers” or potential producers of knowledge, especially in educational and research settings. But what interests Taylor is not just these individuals themselves; it’s also the way able-minded people conceive of their disability, and the fact that those with disabilities don’t get to participate in that conceptualization. “In my work, I don’t deny that people experience differences in their cognition, in how they solve problems and make sense of the world,” Taylor says. “But the way we interpret those differences — that’s where we have to focus.” Excluding people from “the academy” based on the assumption they have nothing to contribute to research or the classroom is tantamount to educational and social injustice, Taylor says. Just as regrettable, it narrows our sense of human variation, because “when we exclude people [with disabilities] as knowers, we impoverish our epistemic frameworks. We limit the way we see and understand the world. We lose the chance to learn how they make meaning.” These questions of exclusion and injustice are especially salient at the intersection of gender and disability. In a course she taught last fall called Feminist Disability Studies, Taylor encouraged her students to investigate how different

22 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

aspects of identity, such as gender, race, class, and ability, position a person in society as a citizen or noncitizen, a member or a threat. That positioning has serious implications, as Taylor pointed out in a 2018 paper in Educational Review, arguing that excluding people based on ability effectively bars them from being knowledge citizens — that is, from taking part fully in civic and political life. It’s hard to persuade others that an intellectual disability label does not prevent someone from having knowledge to contribute, Taylor says, in part because many people “lack intimate knowledge of and relationships with” such individuals, as they’ve long been segregated from mainstream society. To remedy that, in her first semester at the University, Taylor designed a course that included both Colgate undergraduates and students from nearby Otsego Academy at Pathfinder Village, a two-year post-secondary program for students with Down syndrome and other intellectual disabilities. The course, titled Disability, Difference and Inclusion, focused on rights and citizenship. Students from both institutions did the same readings and participated in discussions together. By having everyone approach the materials as equals, Taylor aimed to “disrupt the differentiation between the students.” As a final project, one group of students made a video titled “Inclusion U” in which they declared, “We are more alike than different.” If the questions Taylor is grappling with — What is “normal”? Why do we deny people with intellectual disabilities knowledge equality? — sound deeply philosophical, it’s no accident. She is an expert in philosophy of education as well as disability studies. “I’ve always been drawn to philosophy,” she says. “To me, questions for which there are no clear answers are the most fascinating questions that we can ask.” — Sarah C. Baldwin

Inclusivity

‘People Are People First’ Through the National Ability Center, instructor John Willis ’78 works with individuals on defining success.

n 18-wheeler slammed into a dump truck driven by a man who now goes by the name “Bam Bam.” The accident left him in a coma for 72 days, and today, he still experiences challenges with balance and strength. John Willis ’78, an instructor at the National Ability Center (NAC), has been cycling with Bam Bam every week for the past few years. They started pedaling together on a two-person inline recumbent bike, then Willis had Bam Bam try out different types of solo recumbent bikes, and recently, Willis bought Bam Bam his own recumbent bike through the NAC.

discover

John Willis ’78 instructs a skier using a slider that provides support to those with balance and/or lower extremity issues.

“My goal was to get him his own bike to ride as a next step toward independence,” Willis says. Second only to safety, helping people fulfill their potential to the fullest is the priority of the Park City, Utah, organization. The NAC offers an array of programming, from wakeboarding to rock climbing, for individuals who have a different ability, whether that be physical, developmental, and/or intellectual. Students range from children on the autism spectrum to adult veterans experiencing physical or mental challenges as a result of their service. Willis primarily provides instruction on skiing and mountain biking, although he also supports the archery activities and the ropes course because of his EMT training. Through the Professional Ski Instructors Association of America, he recently earned his level one certification, which focuses on guiding visually impaired and blind skiers. “Our mission is to get people to the point where they have the highest degree of independence — in other words, the least dependence on equipment,” Willis says. “That progression may take weeks, months, or years, depending on the student … but Photography by Derek Israelsen

we provide these experiences for folks to participate in sports to the degree that they absolutely can.” It’s all about “I can,” Willis tells his students. With his guidance, they determine what their level of success looks like, which is different for every individual. For a child with sensory sensitivities, a successful day could be helping him feel comfortable wearing a climbing wall harness. Others with whom the NAC work have competed in the Paralympics. In fact, at the 2018 Paralympic Winter Games, the NAC’s athletes received seven medals. Willis became involved with the organization through his own enthusiasm for skiing. Before moving to Utah, he and his wife would travel there for vacations. While waiting in the lift lines, he began noticing skiers with adaptive equipment, “and I just thought it was really cool,” he remembers. When he and his wife spontaneously decided to move there from Jacksonville, Fla., Willis joined the ski patrol. He’d spent most of his career as an attorney, including eight years as vice president and corporate counsel for Spirit Airlines. Remembering the adaptive skiers he’d seen in the lift line, Willis learned

about the NAC, contacted the recreation director, and “talked myself into a job. “I’ve really grown with it,” Willis says. “It took time to fully understand what we’re doing and how it works. To me, what we do requires emotional depth and endurance.” Their mission is important in that the NAC is giving people an opportunity to do things they might have otherwise thought they couldn’t do or have been dissuaded from doing, he adds. Another aspect of their work is educating able-bodied groups. For example, instructors will provide goggles that simulate different types of visual impairments and students have to navigate an obstacle course, or instructors will have students attempt the climbing wall without the use of one leg. “We try to heighten awareness about what people have to overcome,” Willis says. While he’s out teaching students of different abilities on the ski hill, Willis hopes that others see his students as he did a number of years ago and think, “That’s really cool.” Most importantly, he wants others to realize that “people are people first, and then you go from there.” — Aleta Mayne Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 23

Cell under a microscope

In the lab

One Molecule at a Time Drawing on Colgate research experiences to inform new investigations

illiam Rosencrans ’19 wants to help develop a drug that will encourage a cell to take out the trash. “It needs a little bit of prompting to get it to clean up. It’s like a lazy teenager,” Rosencrans says. Among the pieces of garbage that need to go are old mitochondria. The mitochondria provide power to cells, but — like leaky, spent batteries — damaged mitochondria can cause harm if they hang around too long. This harm may be linked to brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Rosencrans is in the first year of a PhD program at Caltech, where he’s studying the cell’s powerhouses. But his life as a researcher started a few years earlier, through programs at major research institutions.

24 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

His first trip was to Asia in the summer of 2017, as part of Colgate’s newly launched exchange program with the National University of Singapore. Working with biophysicist Johan van der Maarel, Rosencrans studied the way tight coils of DNA loosen so that their genetic instructions can be read. In the years since, he’s continued to work with van der Maarel on analyzing the data from his few months in the lab, and those analyses have led to multiple published papers. The most recent one came out last fall in Biophysical Journal. In the fall of 2018, Rosencrans had another opportunity to do lab research outside of Colgate, through the University’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) study group. He spent the semester in Bethesda, Md., working 30 hours a week in the laboratory of biophysicist Sergey Bezrukov. With Bezrukov and staff scientist Tatiana

Rostovtseva, Rosencrans studied the way energy moves out of mitochondria and into the rest of the cell. Mitochondria are like factories, and they manufacture energy in the form of molecules called ATP. Rosencrans was investigating a protein that acts as the factory’s loading door. Called a voltage-dependent anion channel, it sits in the mitochondrion’s outer membrane. ATP molecules must pass through the door to leave. Eager to continue with the progress he’d made in that research, Rosencrans went back to Bezrukov’s lab for a yearlong position after he graduated in 2019. That year at the NIH didn’t look quite like Rosencrans expected — in the spring, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down his lab. But he found that taking time away from the lab helped him to slow down and collect his thoughts. “One of the silver linings was a lot of time to think about the science,” Rosencrans says, and focus on the bigger picture. “That really helped us when we got back into the lab.” The big picture he was interested in involved a second protein called alphasynuclein. It interacts with the channel protein in a complex way to regulate what can pass through. “This protein just closes the door on the factory and prevents things from getting in and out,” Rosencrans says. Alpha-synuclein is also noteworthy because clumps of the protein show up in the brains of Parkinson’s patients. Although Rosencrans is exploring a different cellular process in his PhD lab at Caltech, this research also has implications for brain disease. The process he’s studying is called mitophagy; it’s when the cell “eats,” or breaks down, old mitochondria. Rosencrans first became interested in the topic at Colgate, where he worked with biology professor Engda Hagos to study the link between faulty mitophagy and certain cancers. Research has shown that this cleanup process is also impaired in Parkinson’s patients. Problems with the mitochondria appear in other neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and ALS too. Rosencrans hopes that his PhD research might be broadly relevant to one day creating drugs that prevent those illnesses. Examining a cell’s inner workings one molecule at a time is fun science, Rosencrans says. But it’s important to him that the fun work translates into helping people. “I think my mission as a scientist is not only to do work that excites me scientifically, but also to make sure that it actually has relevance for society in general.” — Elizabeth Preston

GETTY IMAGES

DISCOVER

Gene-paired embryos her 1

her 7

Gene-unpaired embryos

Biology

Studying Cells in Sync

mark diorio

Professor Ahmet Ay finds new genetic mechanism for adaptation

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” wrote famed geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky in 1973. Colgate professor Ahmet Ay and colleagues at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital have demonstrated this tenet of biology once again in their recent Nature paper, published in January. In it, they examine a common genetic pattern, called paired genes, that occurs across all organisms. They demonstrate for the first time how this gene pattern can be advantageous, if not critical, to an organism’s development. The gene pair the team studied, her1 and her7, belong to a group called clock genes, so named because negative feedback loops cause their expression to oscillate in cycles. That means, as the genes are expressed — i.e., the DNA is transcribed into mRNA, a messenger molecule, which will then

be translated into proteins, the building blocks of the cell — the output signals back to the cell that it should slow down expression of those genes. As expression slows and the output lessens, the dampening signal also slows, allowing expression to ramp back up again. The most famous clock genes are related to circadian rhythms, which cycle in a 24-hour (it’s actually 24.2 hours, says Ay) period and affect human states like sleep and hunger. But in the recent study, Ay and his team studied segmentation clock genes that are important for development, specifically for the growth of consecutive body segments in embryos, using zebrafish as their model organism. In zebrafish, the her1 and her7 genes cycle in 30-minute periods, telling the developing fish’s cells when to make new segments called somites (think: vertebrae). The interesting aspect of her1 and her7 isn’t actually the zebrafish embryos or the so-called segmentation clock, explains Ay. It’s how the two genes are paired: They’re found near each other on the same chromosome, and they share the same on/off switch. But why are her1 and her7 — or any other gene pairs found across genomes, for that matter — linked in this way? “You see gene pairing in all different organisms, and in all different systems,” says Ay. “What are the benefits of that?” Ay and his collaborators,

Oriana Zinani, Kemal Keseroğlu, and Ertuğrul Özbudak, teamed up to figure out why it might be adaptive for these clock genes to be paired. They ran experiments to see what happened when her1 and her7 were unpaired in the cell. Because zebrafish have two copies of each gene in each cell, they could knock out a her1 on one chromosome and a her7 on the other chromosome to see how the cell would respond to having the genes physically separated. Compared with cells that had a her1 and a her7 paired on the same chromosome, cells with the two genes physically separated couldn’t maintain their oscillations — the clock broke. That’s because when gene expression starts at exactly the same time, it gets a head start at mRNA production that allows it to overshoot the “slow down!” signal. That overshooting is needed to create the oscillations; without it, expression of genes just levels out into a steady state. In other words, the precise simultaneous expression of the two genes together was needed to trigger the oscillations, and this just didn’t work when the genes were separated. This precision within a single cell also allows these mechanisms to stay precise across all the cells in a growing tissue — which is important for cells in a developing embryo that need to stay in sync. “[These are] key mechanisms conserved everywhere, so understanding how they work really helps us to understand not one system only, but many different biological systems,” says Ay, whose specialization is in systems biology, mathematical modeling, and statistical learning, which allows his lab group to tackle a wide range of biological questions. “The thing that draws me to this research is its potential beyond this system, beyond just the zebrafish segmentation clock. These findings could be generalizable to other clocks, other biological systems,” he says. — Anna Funk Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 25

Laura Barisonzi

26 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

Somebody to Lean On Different generations support each other through the course of life.

By Aleta Mayne

s the plane ascended into the sky, Sian-Pierre Regis ’06, H’18 gripped his mom’s hand while they nervously smiled into the breeze from the open door. In mere minutes, Regis and his 76-year-old mother, Rebecca Danigelis, would jump into the clouds at 12,000 feet over Oahu. “Here we come, sky … and earth,” she’d said in her English accent, walking toward the plane earlier. The two had arisen at dawn that Wednesday in January 2018 to check off the final item on her bucket list. As she did every day, Danigelis smoothed her blond wisps into a carefully constructed updo. Regis teased her that she needn’t worry about her hair because she’d be falling at 120 miles per hour. “Hair always matters,” she retorted. In these scenes and others throughout Duty Free — Regis’ documentary that follows the duo as Danigelis completes her bucket list — the audience gets an intimate look into their relationship. The film also provides food for thought on a vital topic: ageism. Danigelis is the focal point, and she is frequently shown preparing herself for the day: brushing her hair atop her head, carefully applying her makeup, and straightening her clothing. Similarly, Duty Free shows how she took pride in her employment as a housekeeping supervisor at a Boston hotel, inspecting every inch of a room to ensure perfection. “It’s a hard job, but it’s a very rewarding job because you take things that look like nothing and make them look great,” she says in the film. “Martin Luther King summed it up best,” she added, referencing King’s famous quote: “If a man is called to be a street sweeper… He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’” A year and a half before she and Regis leapt out of that tiny aircraft in Hawaii, Danigelis began sensing a shift in how she was treated at work — which she suspects was due to her age. Her employer started reassigning her duties to younger employees, and she was written up for her “tone,” despite a previously spotless employment record. “My value in their eyes is diminished,” Danigelis says in Duty Free. “She felt she was being pushed out,” Regis remembers. Illustrations by Angelo Dolojan

Having dedicated 12 years of her 40-year career to the company, she considered her coworkers to be like family. And she’d raised her real family — Regis and his brother — in their compact apartment six floors above the hotel. While his mom was working in Boston, Regis was a CNN contributor in New York City and running Swagger.NYC, an online cultural magazine for millennials. It came as a shock to them both when she was fired, given only two weeks’ pay, and told she was allowed to stay one remaining year in the apartment. The pride that usually shone through Danigelis was dampened. “I feel dispensable, and that’s something I’ve never felt before,” she says in the film. For Regis, it was a no-brainer to take action. “I had an emotional, visceral reaction to uplift her,” he says. She’d always supported him — including using her savings for his Colgate education in sociology and anthropology — so he wanted to thank her. At 32, Regis put his career on hold and devised a plan. “I had this crazy idea… I could take her on this bucket-list adventure to do all the things she couldn’t do while she was working, that she put to the side for these people who didn’t care about her.” To enlist financial

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 27

support — for both their adventures and the film he’d started documenting as soon as she began calling him with work concerns — Regis launched a Kickstarter campaign on Mother’s Day in 2017, raising $60,000. Media outlets from ABC News to the New York Times to People magazine covered the story. It even got picked up abroad. “Ageism is mostly an American concept, but connecting with other people is universal,” Regis says. Duty Free — which premiered this Mother’s Day — is a “buddy film,” where he’s the Robin to her Batman, Regis jokes.

It follows Danigelis as she learns hip-hop dancing, milks a cow, and reunites with relatives in England whom she hasn’t seen in years. In Danigelis’ darker moments, it also shines a light on hardships that older Americans can encounter, such as economic insecurity and age barriers to employment (e.g., technology, stigma). Through it all, Regis is by her side. “It was an amazing experience because of how much time we’ve spent together,” he says in Duty Free. “One thing that’s been a realization for me is the importance of having advocates … everyone needs an advocate to survive.”

Regis was named a 2020 Influencer in Aging by Next Avenue. (“My mom is the real influencer,” Regis contends.) Danigelis moved into his New York City apartment, and the two are launching an impact and engagement campaign to support caregivers who are less fortunate. They’re using the film as a catalyst to talk to policy makers about this issue. On a personal level, the mom-son duo has heard from people around the world who identify with Danigelis because their employers forced them into early retirement or laid them off late in life. “My mom’s story was more universal than we could have ever imagined,” Regis says.

Caring for Grandchildren

who have disabilities. Parents, when confronted with a lack of childcare options, often turn to their own parents for help. In the recently released book Grandparenting Children with Disabilities, Abdul-Malak and her coauthor interviewed 50 grandparents “to see how having grandchildren with disabilities affects grandparenting itself,” she explains. As a sociologist, Abdul-Malak conducted this qualitative research to understand how these grandparents’ caregiving commitment is affecting them financially, socially, emotionally, and physically. For most, the experience elicits mixed emotions of enjoying the time they’re spending with their grandchildren and also handling the strain it puts on them personally. One difficulty is having to provide medicalized care for which they’re not trained and that is

outside typical childcare responsibilities. The solution, she asserts, is improving U.S. policy to offer more support. “We know that childhood disability has been increasing recently,” Abdul-Malak says. One reason for this is because there is more awareness about disability, so kids are more likely to be diagnosed. But, she adds, “the federal government as well as employers are not providing benefits to help families respond to the issue of having a grandchild or a child with disability. There is no safety net.” This research is Abdul-Malak’s latest project as a life course scholar. She studies how the structures that are in place from birth impact a person’s life and the aging process. A large portion of her work has involved talking to immigrants about their home countries, the socioeconomic status they were born into, and their move to the United States, all in order to see how those factors have translated into their current life situation. For her 2016 coedited book Grandparenting in the U.S., Abdul-Malak interviewed immigrant grandparents. The topic is personal: Abdul-Malak’s mom, with whom she emigrated from Haiti, died young, at age 51. “I could see how my mom was always tired… She was always working a couple of jobs and providing childcare to her grandchildren,” Abdul-Malak says. “After her death, I became quite intrigued in understanding immigrants’ health in the United States.” Like Regis’ mom, who is also an immigrant, Abdul-Malak’s mother worked as a housekeeper who endured stress due to economic insecurity. “I could see the struggle she went through during her short lifespan,” Abdul-Malak says. “We are one of the richest countries in the world, and we do not provide the kind of care that families need.”

ore than 65 million people in the United States provide care for a chronically ill, disabled, or aged family member or friend during any given year, according to the National Alliance for Caregiving in collaboration with AARP. Professor Ynesse Abdul-Malak has been focusing her research on a segment of this group that hasn’t gained much attention: grandparents caring for their grandchildren

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Beyond the commonalities between her two research groups, Loe has asked herself, “How do I support them?”

Professor Meika Loe shows a photo of herself with her grandfather at a Reunion College event on aging.

Intergenerational Parallels

Professor Meika Loe, Ariel Sherry ’15, and Evan Chartier ’14 coauthored a chapter titled “Ageism: Stereotypes, Causes, Effects, and CounterMovements” in the textbook Gerontology: Changes, Challenges, and Solutions (Praeger, 2016).

hat does a senior in college have in common with a senior citizen? More than you’d think, according to another Colgate life course scholar, Professor Meika Loe. Issues around independence and autonomy, finding purpose, and vulnerability can cause anxiety for both of these groups, she says. “You have college graduates who are ready to launch into the world, and you have senior citizens who are redefining themselves in pretty dramatic ways. That invention or reinvention process has a fascinating similarity.” Loe first heard anecdotal evidence of this when she started pairing students with local elders as part of her class titled Sociology of the Life Course. “[The students] came back with stories about very similar struggles in their lives,” Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 29

she says. “These are chapters of life that are parallel in some ways, that speak to one another.” Those similarities also emerge as the professor considers her previous research in relation to her new project. For her 2011 book, Aging Our Way: Lessons for Living from 85 and Beyond, Loe interviewed 30 elders about creating meaning and purpose as they lived on their own. In many cases, Loe says, those elders felt isolated and vulnerable, emotions that have been amplified for senior citizens — and numerous college students — during the pandemic. Last fall, she put out a nationwide call for students to participate in her fiveyear study on young adults in flux. She’ll be interviewing them a few times a year to find out how they’re navigating work, home, health care, relationships, and identity. “We hear so much about young adults dealing with anxiety and depression — and it’s real,” Loe says. There are challenges with finding employment, for one. And they’re “experiencing this cumulative grief with the loss of rituals in their lives, like graduation or prom … these milestones they’ve had to skip and the sacrifices they’re making.” Beyond the commonalities between her two research groups, Loe has asked herself, “How do I support them?” All of the elders from her previous study have died, but “I still feel their presence in my life,” she says. The granddaughter of one woman, who lived to 104, recently told Loe that she has been listening to the recorded interviews and loves hearing her grandmother’s voice. Another woman’s granddaughter called Loe to request copies of the book for the greatgrandchildren. “For these families, being able to have their elders’ stories clearly mattered,” Loe says. “That’s a beautiful thing [for these relatives] to be in touch with them [that way] and also to know that they lived and died with dignity.” At the time she was interviewing the elders, Loe was caring for her grandfather, which gives her a deeper empathy when she communicates with these grandchildren. Also, some of the intergenerational connections that Loe’s made through her Sociology of the Life Course continue (as does the class). Several graduates who have moved away still keep in touch with the elders they met in Hamilton. Loe describes the partnerships as symbiotic: “They share their vulnerabilities with each other in a way that you’d never imagine… [With] peers, it’s almost like there are rules for interaction with people in our same age group. There’s something about being with someone of a different age group where you can really open up and create that level of intimacy.”

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Leaving a Legacy

hose who knew Ruth Hartshorne, the widow of philosophy and religion professor Marion Holmes Hartshorne, probably remember the sign on her Hamilton door: “Friends! Ring the doorbell, open the door, and holler! If I’m asleep, please wake me up! I’d rather have a visit from you than a nap.” Ruth, who died at age 103 in 2016, was included in Loe’s Aging Our Way and was also one of the elders whom Ariel Sherry ’15 would visit while she was a student. “I had more friends over the age of 90 while I was in college than most people do in their lifetimes,” quips Sherry, who took Loe’s Sociology of the Life Course and participated in the Adopt-A-Grandparent student group. Sherry fondly looks back on partnering with a woman named Betty for Loe’s class

and finding inspiration in another older friend, Charlotte, who often boasted that she had no regrets in life. “These women had amazing perspectives and stories to share,” Sherry says, “and that’s something I always felt from my grandma — she was the wisest person I knew.” In the fourth grade, Sherry had to complete a biography project. Instead of choosing to write about Hillary or Oprah, she wrote about Audrey — that is, Audrey Goldstein, her grandmother. Goldstein’s cancer had just returned for the second time, and “she was so positive in the face of this challenge,” Sherry says. “She was this larger-than-life personality, so optimistic, and ended up living two years longer than her doctor thought she was going to. I credit that to her outlook.” Toward the end of Goldstein’s life, she wrote a legacy letter to her grandchildren, providing points of wisdom “[so we would] have her guidance, even when she wasn’t around,” Sherry says. “It’s the best gift I’ve ever received.” Her grandmother’s end of life shaped Sherry’s beliefs about this stage: “The

general population tends to view [the subject of] death and dying negatively and tries to avoid it. I think it’s in our best interest to embrace it and reflect on it. Because when we do, it gives us more clarity on what matters now and can shape how we live our lives so that we’re living in accordance with our values,” says the psychology and religion major. When Sherry took Sociology of the Life Course, she read Dr. Atul Gawande’s New Yorker article “Letting Go,” in which he talks about improving the health care system to help dying patients achieve what’s most important to them. “People who had substantive discussions with their doctor about their end-of-life preferences were far more likely to die at peace and in control of their situation, and to spare their family anguish,” Gawande wrote. “That article was my turning point,” Sherry says. “He was saying exactly what I knew but didn’t know how to say about how end of life can be better if we focus on quality of life and what matters most to people. I thought, ‘That’s what I want to be part of.’” Today, Sherry still has her hard copy of that article — and she is senior product manager at Cake, the largest end-of-life platform, used by 25 million people a year. As such, her role involves research and talking with users in order to inform engineers who build solutions, resources, and tools. Cake’s goal is to help people navigate mortality, from the initial idea of becoming more comfortable thinking about death, to answering questions about end of life, to planning. “Our mission is to help everyone have a good death, because we think that is, at least in some ways, attainable for everyone if they prepare,” she says. End-of-life planning is not only for older adults, Sherry asserts. “We have a tremendous number of users who are millennials. This applies to everyone, and it’s never too early to start thinking about.” Making plans in advance can not only save people’s families from arguing over arrangements, but it can also lead to a more powerful experience for the family — like the legacy letter Audrey Goldstein wrote. “There are so many options out there, and there are many nontraditional things people are doing,” Sherry says. “It can have a profound and lasting impact on your family and loved ones.”

Ariel Sherry ’15 is vice president of Boston Bridge, a nonprofit that connects emerging professionals in the field of aging.

“It’s flipped the script of going from child to parent; those roles have reversed in terms of responsibilities.”

Alzheimer’s Assistance

t first, there were minor incidents: jumbled communication, missed appointments, forgetting to make dinner. “We all started noticing small things that were just a little bit off,” Leda Rosenthal ’18 says. Then, when Leda took a high school graduation trip to Europe with her mom, Eva, there was “a big red flag.” They’d landed in Frankfurt and planned to drive the six hours to Prague to stay with family. “Where do they live?” Leda asked. Eva responded, “I don’t know.” At age 57, Eva was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. “Typically, when you get that diagnosis, the disease has already progressed enough that you’re noticing changes, which leads the individual to go to the doctor,” Leda says. Wanting to find ways to help, she Googled technologies that could address some of her mom’s problems, like a reminder to turn off the stove. “Articles were out of date,” she says. “And there was a ton of jargon; it wasn’t easy to find reliable, digestible information. Family caregivers are already exhausted and overwhelmed.” At Colgate, through the Thought Into Action (TIA) program, Leda developed a solution. Her venture, Alz You Need, is a technology discovery platform that makes it easy for caregivers to find the best technologies to support their caregiving needs. On the site, users spend about five minutes answering Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 31

Colgate Magazine asked some older alumni to consider this thought experiment: If you wrote an autobiography, what would its title be? “What’s for Dessert?” — Paul Beardslee ’59, age 83

“Leaving the Campground” — Dave Kluge ’50, age 92, says: This is “from an old Boy Scout tradition; leave the campground better than you found it.”

“Learning and Weaving” — Bob Woodruff ’58, age 84

“Finding a Way to Win” — Fred Dunlap ’50, age 92 (former Colgate head football coach and athletics director) “Good Luck Plays a Big Role in Life” — Robert Youker ’55, age 87, explains: “A connection with a Colgate classmate at a University of California football game totally changed my 3 years in the Navy and probably helped me get accepted in Harvard Business School.” “What a Ride — Mutterings of a 100-Year-Older” — Ken Seyffer ’43, age 100

For more responses, visit colgatemagazine.com.

LifeLong Learning in Hamilton is a community-based program, sponsored by Colgate’s Upstate Institute, that provides adults with ongoing education. Spring programming tackled subjects including traditional Chinese medicine, political conflicts tied to religious conflicts, and New York City history.

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questions about the person they’re caregiving for, their proximity to that person, their technology capabilities, and day-to-day challenges. “You don’t go to the doctor and say, ‘I need XYZ medication’; you talk about your problems, not solutions,” Leda says. “And I thought when discovering technology, it should be exactly that.” Alz You Need informs users about available options like automatic pill dispensers, a tablet for older adults called GrandPad, and clocks that remind Alzheimer’s patients to do something at a specific time of day. “Technology can support day-to-day tasks, cognitive engagement, and health tracking in a variety of ways,” Leda says. In 2016, she received $15,000 from the TIA Entrepreneur’s Fund and spent the summer in Hamilton developing the platform. Alumni mentors in the program helped fill knowledge gaps about strategy, customer acquisition, and a marketing plan. “Those relationships were critical because they gave me a set of eyes and thought partners in an area of expertise I hadn’t developed yet; when you’re 19, trying to build something, it’s so trial by error.” Toward the end of her senior year, Leda signed an offer with LinkedIn for a rotational business program, but she had six months between graduation and its start. She dedicated those months to furthering Alz You Need, with the support of three Colgate interns. Speaking engagements gave Leda the opportunity to spread the word and build her customer base. Ever

since, she’s maintained the venture as a lifestyle business. “I’ve continued to keep the database up to date so I can make sure families are finding valuable technologies,” she says. In an average month, there are approximately 400 users on the site. Eva is now 62 and has progressed into the later stages of the disease. Over the years, Leda has used her platform to find solutions for the problems they’ve faced, such as Eva’s wandering. The disease has taken an emotional toll on their small nuclear family. For Leda’s dad (the “Caregiver in Chief,” as he’s referred to on the company’s website), there are feelings of isolation as he watches his wife change. For Leda and her brother, “it’s flipped the script of going from child to parent; those roles have reversed in terms of responsibilities,” she says. The two serve as their dad’s sounding board for making tough decisions. And then there’s just “being there to love our mom and spend time with our mom in whatever form that looks like, which is always changing.” Families need to be in a position to support their loved ones, as Sherry points out. In Leda’s case, her mom was relatively young, and they didn’t have a plan in place. But for her dad, they have “every scenario mapped out, papers in order, power of attorney,” Leda says. “That allows you to make better decisions in real time when things do happen,” she adds. “Today’s youth have to think about how we want to age. Our decisions now and us using our voices have the biggest impact on that.”

Radical Contributions

andy MacKinnon grew up above the Red & White shop in Bouckville, N.Y., in the ’40s. Her dad owned the grocery store, through which MacKinnon sold second-hand clothes to the migrant workers from the local farms. Seventy years later, MacKinnon owned her own store nearby, in Hamilton, selling thrift clothing, knickknacks, and knitted goods. In this shop, she and Evan Chartier ’14 spent hours chatting about life, knitting, and World War II. “I found it interesting as a Jewish person to hear her stories about the war,” says Chartier, who became friends with MacKinnon when he was a student in Loe’s Sociology of the Life Course. As part of the class, each student created a digital storytelling project with their elderly partners. In the video “A Life of Love and Friendship During World War II,” MacKinnon remembers air raid drills, food rationing, and competing with other kids to find the largest tin foil ball (scrap drives collected foil, which was used to make explosives). MacKinnon died last October from COVID-19, a devastating end after fighting breast cancer for 20 years. Chartier had kept in touch with her and planned to visit last year but couldn’t because of the pandemic. He’s recently been in touch with her family (who invited him to visit them in Montana) and hopes that MacKinnon’s story can live on through her video. Chartier spent half of last year in Jerusalem, caring for his mom as she underwent chemotherapy for stage four lymphoma. Like Regis, he grew up in a close-knit trio with his mother and brother. “My mom has been the core person in my life; it was an easy decision to go take care of her.” His mom, Sylvia, worked in elder care, aiding a woman with early onset Alzheimer’s, right up until the day she started chemotherapy (only stopping upon her doctor’s insistence). Sylvia’s in remission, and Chartier has returned to building his tiny house — and caring community — in Craftsbury Common, Vt. “The people out here are used to doing things on their own: they’re farmers, they’re homesteaders, they’re folks who have built their own houses,” he says. “Everyone here is self-sustaining.” But many of Chartier’s community members are

getting older. “Vermont has a really aging population, so there’s an opportunity for folks to pitch in and help.” Through his initiative called Simple Projects, Radical Politics, Chartier wants to “change the world, one project at a time” by meeting community needs while creating alternative economies. To assist retired couple Kelly and Randy, Chartier has done brush hogging on their 100 acres, house sitting so they could take their first vacation in 30 years, and he’ll remodel the back of their house this spring. For George and Rachel, who live on the other side of the mountain, he took care of their water buffalo for a few days. In exchange, Chartier will barter, work under the gift economy idea, and/or receive small payments that he’ll use to sustain himself or pay it forward. “I come from a low-income background, so I’m really good at making do with not a lot of money,” he says. After he built a pole bean trellis for Jennifer, she paid him with pottery she’d made. Recently, he fixed a washing machine for Lynette — a costly repair that would motivate most people to buy a new one. He fixed the appliance in exchange for some plants and a small payment. “If I can keep a washing machine out of the landfill, then I would like to do that, even if it means I’m working for free,” he says. That’s where the “radical politics” comes in. Another facet of that ideal involves Chartier finding creative ways to support social justice (an area he has focused on as both a women’s studies and sociology major as well as his previous leadership position

at Northeastern University). Last year, he was hired by a prestigious New York City high school to facilitate an affinity space for white students as part of an anti-racism initiative. With his earnings, he “chose to redistribute institutional wealth by donating my payment to an organization near the school created by and for LGBTQ people of color,” he explains. Chartier and his partner, Mary, have lived in Vermont since they decided in 2019 that they wanted to be present for their 9- and 11-year-old nieces. “We made significant decisions to be near the young people in our lives because we want to be part of helping raise them into adulthood,” he says. His foundation is built on family and a strong sense of community. Growing up, his mom was a childcare provider, and the kids she took care of are still his best friends. Also, his family experienced housing insecurity, so he moved 11 times before the age of 18. He often relied on staying with friends’ families — “which means that I’m not only really close with these folks who are my age, but I’m also really close with their parents” — and he spent a few years in his great-aunt’s assisted living facility. Now he’s created more extended family and community in his rural Vermont home. Kelly and Randy, for example, say they formed “an instant connection and trust” when meeting Chartier. “His youthful outlook and thoughts on issues and projects is refreshing and motivating to us,” Kelly says. “We both feel very fortunate to have found Evan, and he became more than a helper. He became our friend.”

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK DIORIO HISTORICAL IMAGES COURTESY OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

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PLACES of IMAGINATION EXPLORE THE HISTORY BEHIND CAMPUS SPACES

HASCALL HALL

Visualize yourself sitting in a Colgate classroom. As you unpack your notebooks and begin listening to your professor lecture on the Challenges of Modernity, you look outside the window, onto the academic quad. You know the storied history of West Hall, built by the hands of Colgate students before you. But what about the other structures that make up the campus? After class, you’ll head to your next course in Hascall Hall, but who was Hascall? We’ll tell you. By Rebecca Docter Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 35

Hascall Hall has had several iterations since its opening in February 1885: It was first called the “Chemistry Laboratory” and later “Old Biology.” The building, designed in the Queen Anne style, demonstrated President Ebenezer Dodge’s will to expand the sciences at what was then Madison University. Dodge combined his finances with Samuel Colgate’s and other donors’ — the structure, made of local stone and trimmed with red brick, would cost $10,000.

The building would become one of the first on campus dedicated exclusively to classrooms. On the first floor, students studied chemistry and physics, and on the second floor, they conducted quantitative analyses — taught by Joseph F. McGregory. To thank Dodge for his contribution to the study of science, the University erected a stained glass window with his likeness over the building’s west entrance. The window, removed in 1971, was gifted by the Class of 1886, the first to use the building. In 1906, when the University matched a donation from Andrew Carnegie, an extension was added to the east side of the building. “The decline of ‘Old Bio’ was in part because the University had planned on its destruction from the late 1920s — and certainly the 1930s — as a way of clearing the quad and view east from the Chapel,” says Professor of Art and Art History Robert McVaugh, who specializes in 20thcentury architecture. In the early 1970s, the building nearly met its maker — it was in grave disrepair, and the University planned to demolish it in favor of the new Olin Hall. Wanting to “Save Old Bio,” students and faculty members fought this idea, and Hascall was eventually added to the National Register of Historic Places. This gave the opportunity to make use of federal funds to resuscitate the building. One of the most recent renovations of the building came in 1976, by architecture firm Rogers, Butler, and Burgun — they also built the original Olin and Wynn halls. The Carnegie expansion was removed, and the building was restored and renamed to honor one of Colgate’s 13 founders. Namesake: Daniel Hascall was the seminary’s first teacher and the author of the oldest-known publication by a faculty member: a treatise on the meaning of baptism from 1818. Hascall was one of only a few college-educated Baptist ministers in New York at the time of the seminary’s founding, and he was a proponent of “a more literate and better educated clergy,” according to James Allen Smith ’70 in Becoming Colgate. It’s clear Hascall is a lasting figure on campus — he designed and built West Hall, and together with Professor Philetus B. Spear, he played a large part in keeping the University in Hamilton during removalist efforts in the mid-1800s.

Do you know what geological feature is in the walls of Hascall Hall? Check the online version of this story for the answer.

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1900

HASCALL HALL

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 37

1950

True to its namesake, who revolutionized the sciences at the University, McGregory Hall (dedicated in the early 1930s) was built to house the Department of Chemistry. In fact, McGregory assisted the architect, Walter B. Chambers, in planning the building to suit its future chemistry students. The building was the bequest of Evelyn Colgate and was also a gift of her father, James C. Colgate, Class of 1884. It underwent renovations in 1981. Namesake: The charismatic Joseph F. McGregory was hired by President Dodge in 1883 at a time when science was a fledgling subject at the University. During his time at Madison, McGregory completely changed the way the University approached the sciences, “and over a forty-six-year career, his magnetic personality and brilliant teaching drew many more students into the sciences,” according to Smith in Becoming Colgate. He was also active in the Hamilton community, conducting the choir at the First Baptist Church, and he may have organized the University’s first chorus.

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BURKE AND PINCHIN HALLS

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Dedicated on the eve of Colgate’s third century, Burke and Pinchin halls stand as a testament to the University’s proud traditions and bold ambitions. These two new residence halls are the first to be added to the upper campus since Stillman Hall in 1927. Designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects to blend into the campus architecture, the buildings adhere to LEED Silver sustainability standards. The halls celebrate the living-learning model, containing seminar rooms and social lounges, in addition to each having 100 beds for students. Pinchin Hall was funded by an anonymous couple, and Burke Hall was named in recognition of a $10 million gift from Gretchen Hoadley ’81 and Steve Burke ’80, P’11,’20. Namesakes: A member of the Board of Trustees, Gretchen Hoadley ’81 Burke P’11,’20 majored in English and earned her MBA at Harvard. Steve Burke ’80, P’11,’20 earned his degree in history. Their name on the building across the courtyard from Pinchin Hall is fitting: “During my student days, [Jane Pinchin] was a favorite faculty member and my thesis adviser,” Gretchen says. “When Steve was a trustee, we knew her as an active interim president.” Jane Lagoudis Pinchin, Thomas A. Bartlett Chair and professor of English emerita, ﬁrst came to Colgate in 1965 to teach Core 17, a literature course. She was one of the ﬁrst two women to teach full-time at the University. Pinchin taught part-time from 1969–70 and then entered a tenure-stream position. She served as provost and dean of the faculty during her career at Colgate, in addition to interim president from 2001–02.

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Love it or hate it, Dana Arts Center is difficult to miss. The brutalist, concrete building was funded in part by the Charles A. Dana Foundation. In 1962, the foundation’s namesake visited campus and, after seeing the need for new arts facilities, offered $400,000 if the University raised another $800,000. Designed by Paul Rudolph, the building plans originally featured a bridge connecting it to the quad. “Why have that bridge?” Dana questioned, according to the April 10, 1964, edition of the New York Times. “Walking is good exercise for the students.” The plans also incorporated a concert hall, art gallery, and rehearsal spaces, which were all nixed when the project became too costly. Many structural elements of Dana are puzzling for a space built for the arts. For example, concrete walls do not support the melodies played by music majors, and rehearsal and teaching spaces are cramped. Unfortunately, the building hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years: “Dana’s deficiencies have not been remedied,” Smith notes in Becoming Colgate. However, upon Dana’s completion, students were excited to have a place devoted to the arts and creativity. According to the Feb. 29, 1968, Maroon, to “focus

circa 1966

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appreciative attention on the new Dana Arts Center,” students planned a 14-day festival called Fortnight, which ended with a performance by The Doors. Even though the version of Dana that exists today is a far cry from what was originally planned and needed, it’s a place for the arts to call home. Architecture students and fans of brutalism commonly visit the building, the first to use Rudolph’s split rib block concept. And, if you’ve ever been inside Dana, you know that the building gives off a certain feeling. Professor of Music Bill Skelton said it best in the March 1989 edition of the Scene: “The light changes the building every day. At night, it scares you to death sometimes, and in the morning it sings.” Namesake: Charles A. Dana was a legislator, industrialist, and philanthropist who started his foundation in 1950. The foundation supported building projects at several other higher education institutions before Dana Arts Center was constructed.

DANA ARTS CENTER

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Harry H. Lang Cross Country Course and Fitness Trails For a quarter century, students have witnessed the beauty of the Chenango Valley from these trails. Dedicated on June 2, 1996, the space was funded by Harry Lang Jr. ’48, alumni, parents, friends, and several leadership donors. Colgate’s cross country teams compete on the course, and there are 5K and 8K trails in addition to mountain bike paths. Some other notable aspects: the Darwin Thinking Path, the Double Loop Trail, and, of course, the Ski Hill (we all have of a memory of that one). At the end of the Edge Trails, you’ll stumble upon Colgate’s quarry, which lent its stones to several campus buildings. While you’re on the trails, take a look at some wildlife: “Colgate’s forested lands provide a mini-sanctuary for some of the most colorful and charismatic songbirds in North America,” Director of Sustainability John Pumilio says. “With a careful eye, strikingly beautiful birds such as the scarlet tanager and indigo bunting can be seen along the Harry Lang trails. Each spring and summer, these trails come alive with a beautiful chorus of bird songs. Thrushes, wrens, and warblers are among the species singing above springtime walkers, hikers, and outdoor enthusiasts. Songsters, such as the beloved wood thrush whose population has declined by 62% since the mid-1960s, breed and depend on Colgate’s forest to help ensure the next generation of thrushes.” Namesake: Born in Buffalo, N.Y., Harry Lang Jr. ’48 devoted his life to service. After high school, he joined the Army and was stationed in Germany during WWII. He came to the Hill to study history and spent his time outside of class competing in lacrosse and enjoying the company of his brothers as a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon. Upon earning his master’s degree from the University at Buffalo School of Social Work in 1952, he embarked on a 42-year career at Hillside Children’s Center in Rochester, N.Y. “Frequently working 12–14-hour days, he lived on campus for many years, often eating meals in the cottages with the children and staff,” read his obituary in The Buffalo News. “He was committed to ensuring that Hillside provided high quality services that were in the best interest of children and families.” In his free time, Lang watched his beloved Buffalo Bills at every home game for more than 30 years. Lang died on Dec. 16, 2020, at age 93.

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Harry H. Lang Trails

the village and the valley to the north,” says Howard D. Williams in A History of Colgate University: 1819–1969. After Spear’s use, the building was briefly occupied by a fraternity, followed by various faculty members. It was renovated in 1935 to house the Samuel Colgate Baptist Historical Collection, but was renovated again in 1947 and has since held University offices. When Spear resided in the house, he also owned the land around it. This became an issue when the University planned to build James B. Colgate Hall, delaying the project for about a decade. “Colgate’s frustrated aspiration for a library on the site had significant ripple effects we still feel in the organization of the campus,” says McVaugh. Namesake: Philetus B. Spear devoted most of his life to what would later become Colgate, graduating from the college in 1836 and then from the seminary in 1838. He taught Hebrew and Latin for 60 years, in addition to acting as treasurer of the University.

Spear House circa 1900s–1920s

Bolton House 1976

Spear House Unlike many of the other buildings on campus, Spear House was originally a faculty residence, first to Professor Joel Bacon in 1835 and then Professor Philetus B. Spear, who bought the property then named “Claremont” in 1838. The stone house was “situated so as to command sweeping vistas through the woods toward the west and

Bolton House Less than a mile from the Hill sits 84 Broad Street, also known as Bolton House. Built in 1927 and previously housing the Sigma Nu fraternity, it transitioned into a women’s residence and resource center in 1977. “One of the misunderstandings about the house is that it is a sorority — it isn’t … the house is open to everyone on campus, not just a select few,” writes Jean Walsh ’80 in the Sept. 17, 1976, issue of the Maroon. From 1985–94, Bolton was the women’s studies theme house. Now, it actually is a sorority house: Members of Delta Delta Delta occupy the residence. Namesake: Frances P. Bolton H’40, Elisha Payne’s great-granddaughter, was a Republican congresswoman from Ohio who advocated for education, health care, and civil rights. Bolton took her late husband’s senate seat in 1940, becoming the first woman elected to the position from Ohio. As a woman in office during wartime (and as a survivor of the 1918 flu pandemic), she wrote the Bolton Act, which created the U.S. Cadet Nurse Corps to help with health care during WWII. The Bolton Act did not discriminate based on race or ethnicity: “What we see is that America cannot be less than herself once she awakens to the realization that freedom does not mean license and that license can be the keeping of others from sharing that freedom,” Bolton said, according to congressional records.

“

Campuses are places of the imagination as much as they are physical arrangements of buildings and lawns. … Over the years, different ideas of what Colgate ought to be came to the fore, and the campus reflected these new notions. So now we come to the Colgate campus with its history written in stone. But we also come to a place where aspirations and dreams ... conjured up buildings and spaces designed to reflect or inspire our highest ideals.” — President Brian W. Casey, in the foreword to the leaflet for The Hill Envisioned, a Bicentennial exhibition, Clifford Gallery, April 25–June 3, and Aug. 27–Oct. 3, 2018.

Read about the University’s building future in the next issue of Colgate Magazine. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 45

RAPID RESPONSE Six alumni, working across the sciences, found their roles changing last year as they pivoted to face the pandemic head-on. In fields ranging from medicine to public health to data science, they turned their attention to building models, scrutinizing antibodies, measuring inequities, and even safeguarding a presidential debate. And, of course, developing vaccines. By Elizabeth Preston

TRI ALS AN D T E R A BY T E S When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Najat Khan ’06 looked around and saw nothing but unanswered questions. “We didn’t know anything,” she says. There were no scientific experts on the new coronavirus, or doctors with experience treating infected patients. She also saw that she was in a position to help resolve some of those questions. “If there’s anything that can fill the gaps in our knowledge and make the unpredictable predictable,” Khan says, “it is the use of data science.”

Illustrations by Keith Negley

Khan is chief data science officer for Janssen Research & Development, part of the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson. Before the pandemic, she was applying data science to projects all over the map, from neuroscience to cancer research. “It’s great fun,” she says. But when Janssen began working on a vaccine, that project became her singular focus. “We wanted to make it as quickly as possible, as safely as possible, and the best vaccine that we could develop,” Khan says. To help design the COVID-19 vaccine trial, Khan and her coworkers wanted the power to predict where and how the virus would spread, and who was most at risk. Working with collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they built a complex new model that was like nothing Khan had worked on before. Their model didn’t just take into account infections and deaths; it also included social and political factors. It predicted government policies and restrictions, from the national level down to the county level. It also predicted how well people would comply with those restrictions: Would they wear masks? Refrain from traveling? “These are terabytes of data that we are looking through,” Khan says. The problem was too big for traditional statistical

methods. Instead, the team created a sophisticated machine-learning model that grew smarter as they fed it more data. The model proved to be highly accurate, Khan says, anticipating outbreaks in the South and Midwest months ahead of time. This helped Janssen design its vaccine trial. The trial was event-based, which means a certain number of participants needed to get infected before scientists would have enough data to know how well the vaccine worked, compared to a placebo. If Janssen had participants in areas where the virus was surging, they might reach that number of events — and be able to end the trial — sooner. That’s exactly what happened, Khan says. Because the virus was spreading so rapidly among the populations they’d targeted, Janssen reached the necessary number of infections sooner than expected. It ended its trial after recruiting just 45,000 subjects, instead of the 60,000 researchers had planned on. This shortened the trial timeline by about a month, Khan says. Better yet, the results earned the vaccine an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the FDA. Even after the success of the model, there’s always more to learn. Khan says she and her colleagues anticipated that new virus variants might arise, possibly more Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 47

contagious or more deadly. But the degree to which that has happened is beyond what they expected, Khan says: “The pandemic is extremely dynamic.” The world is changing week by week, she adds, and her team is always working to answer new questions. What’s certain, though, is how useful data science can be in a fast-moving global crisis like this one. “We have to be able to integrate this in our ways of working, and ways of thinking, if we are going to stay ahead of a lot of these unexpected events,” Khan says. She’ll never run out of applications for her work. “The question is, are we applying it in a way that is helping people and humanity? That’s all that matters.”

Khan was part of an alumni panel that discussed “The Search for a Treatment: A Conversation About COVID-19” in December 2020. The group of medical and legal professionals from the University community was convened by the Colgate Health and Wellness and STEM professional networks. For more information on Colgate professional networks, visit colgate.edu/cpn.

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T H A NK YOU FOR MAK ING N OT HING HAPPEN Ken Sands ’81 has a photo that seems like a relic of an earlier time. It’s from a meeting where he and coworkers were planning their response to the new coronavirus that had recently come to the United States. Although the subject was serious, “One of the people on our planning team put on a mask as a joke,” Sands says. “And we all took that person’s picture, like it was a crazy thing to be wearing this mask while wearing a suit.” It was early March 2020. “Life has changed dramatically in a small amount of time. That’s for sure,” Sands says. Today, he’s so used to wearing a mask that he often forgets he has it on. Office life looks different, and so does the inside of the hospitals that Sands oversees. As chief epidemiologist for HCA Healthcare — a company based in Nashville, Tenn., that operates 185 hospitals around the country — Sands’ job is to keep people safe inside those facilities. He works to minimize risks such as infections, falls, and medical errors. But 2020 brought a new danger to his doors. Sands first realized his job would change drastically when evidence emerged last winter that even people with no symptoms could carry and spread COVID-19. “It

became very clear that this was going to be a worldwide event,” Sands says. By late February, “We were starting to prepare for an extraordinary experience.” He and his colleagues began a frantic game of catch-up with the new virus. At first, it was hard to even identify all the hospitalized patients who were sick with COVID-19. Doctors were still learning about different ways the illness could appear: not just fever and cough, but loss of smell, for example. The team had to create new protocols for protecting health care workers who were treating COVID-19 patients, even as those patients were coming through the doors. To date, HCA Healthcare has managed tens of thousands of COVID-19 patients, and Sands feels confident that the protocols in place are keeping patients, staff, and visitors safe. Researchers have also learned more about measures that can help protect the public, like those masks that looked so strange in March. Not that everyone follows such guidelines. At the September presidential debate in Cleveland, Ohio, members of the Trump family refused to wear masks. When HCA Healthcare became the safety sponsor for the next presidential debate in Nashville, Sands and his team were determined to see their rules followed. Sands led the creation of debate protocols that included rules for testing, masking, seating, and ventilation. Ultimately, he says, the event went off smoothly. The audience kept their masks on (even the Trumps). “We demonstrated that it is possible to hold a large public event that has an important public service aspect, as long as things are done safely,” Sands says. Someday after the pandemic ends, these guidelines will be unnecessary again. But Sands hopes some lessons from this time will linger, such as attention to the safety of health care workers, whose work is risky even in normal times. “My job is largely to keep things from happening,” Sands says. On a normal day, when the protocols that he’s helped put in place are working well, “People typically don’t call you up and say, ‘Hey, I noticed nobody got influenza in any of your hospitals yesterday. Thank you for making nothing happen!’” Public health faces the same challenge, Sands says. It can be easy to underfund and overlook when things feel safe. But he hopes governments will invest more in research that will help us prevent or respond to future pandemics. “Hopefully this experience will change the degree to which these programs are viewed as being essential, as opposed to being optional,” Sands says.

Using publicly available data, the team compared testing across different zip codes in New York. They found that testing was higher in areas with more white residents.

FI N D I N G A WAY TO HE LP The dive into COVID-19 research began over breakfast for Emma Krasovich ’15. It was March 13, 2020, the day after UC Berkeley had asked staff to stay home and work remotely if they could. Krasovich and her colleagues from the university’s Global Policy Lab were holding their biweekly breakfast virtually. The group of about 15 usually uses the time to hear about each other’s projects, which are across different areas, including climate change, development, and health. But this time, through their computer screens, they talked about the virus. They wondered whether, with all their different areas of expertise, they might be able to help. “Can we do something quickly? Can we make a difference in some way?” recalls Krasovich, who earned a master’s in public health after Colgate. “We decided yes, let’s do it. And everyone in the lab dropped all their other projects.” Across the country, another recent graduate, Wil Lieberman-Cribbin ’14, was working after finishing his own public health degree. Neither expected that just a few years after going into the field, they’d find themselves in a global public health crisis of historic magnitude, with the opportunity to do research that might help. Lieberman-Cribbin was a clinical research coordinator at the Institute for Translational Epidemiology, part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. In the spring of 2020, finding themselves at the U.S. epicenter of the pandemic,

Lieberman-Cribbin and his colleagues turned their attention to COVID-19 testing. “We had a sense that testing was not rolled out well or organized at all,” Lieberman-Cribbin says. “We wanted to quantify these feelings.” Using publicly available data, the team compared testing across different ZIP codes in New York. They found that testing was higher in areas with more white residents. But these areas, as well as areas with higher socioeconomic status, had lower rates of positive tests. In other words, the neighborhoods with the most infected people — where tests were most needed — were getting tested less. The finding was published last June in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Back in Berkeley, Krasovich and her colleagues had decided to study how policies such as lockdowns, closures, and travel bans were affecting disease spread. They gathered information on more than 1,700 such policies from six countries. (Most data points came from the United States, Krasovich notes, where restrictions differed from one city to the next.) There were relatively few U.S. cases when the team started. But, Krasovich says, “Every day that we worked, we were seeing that number go up. So, there was this huge sense of urgency.” They collected their data and finished their analysis in just eight days. The analysis suggested that these anticontagion policies had significantly slowed the spread of COVID-19, preventing or delaying tens of millions of cases. Their paper was published in Nature in June. It also appeared in Altmetric’s list of the 100 “most discussed” articles of 2020.

Krasovich was excited about the publication, but disappointed as 2020 went on to see governments and individuals abandoning the policies that could slow disease spread. “We all had this sense that research can change the way people think about a problem,” she says. “In short, it was beyond frustrating. And kind of disheartening.” Still, she says, she tries to stay hopeful. As her own study showed, the actions that people did take have saved lives, and further research can continue to guide those actions. Lieberman-Cribbin was also discouraged by what he saw in New York. The testing rollout early in the pandemic was “embarrassing,” he says. His research also highlighted how the people in the city most vulnerable to COVID-19 weren’t getting support, whether in the form of more accessible testing or economic resources that would let them stay home from work, for example. “There has to be a reassessment of who is essential to our society,” LiebermanCribbin says. He’s now a PhD student in the Environmental Health Sciences program at Columbia University, where he’s looking at disparities in COVID-19 antibody testing. Krasovich has returned to her usual research on sustainable development. But she’s glad she got to participate in the maddash coronavirus paper. “It was definitely a crazy experience and something that I don’t think most people get to do,” she says. Others in her lab are still working on COVID-19 research — which she gets to hear about every two weeks, over a bagel. Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 49

Researchers think mis-c might stem from a delayed overreaction by the immune system to the coronavirus infection.

L ESS O N S I N THE B LO O D In the spring of 2020, reports arose of a new danger related to COVID-19. Although the virus generally didn’t sicken children as often or as badly as adults, a small number of kids were developing a serious condition that seemed to follow an earlier COVID-19 infection. “It can be scary for doctors and patients and families,” says pediatric physician Anne Rowley ’78, “because you’ve got a child who seemed to have recovered from COVID — if they even knew they had it.” Then, suddenly, the child is sick with symptoms such as fever, rash, red eyes, and heart trouble. The child may even end up in intensive care. Doctors dubbed the new condition multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C, and compared it to Kawasaki disease, a mysterious illness with similar symptoms that mostly affects children. Rowley is a professor of pediatrics and microbiology and immunology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a physician at Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Her specialty is Kawasaki disease, and when the new illness emerged, she began investigating that too. Her research is revealing how children’s immune systems react to the new coronavirus — and how important it is for scientists to challenge their own assumptions. One aspect of the disease doctors have discovered is that even if MIS-C patients need help in the hospital, they almost always get better. “In general, children recover completely, so far as we can tell,” she says.

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Researchers think MIS-C might stem from a delayed overreaction by the immune system to the coronavirus infection, Rowley says. They don’t know why it mainly affects kids, but they’ve been trying to learn more about how a child’s immune response to the virus differs from an adult’s. To do that, Rowley and her colleagues are taking antibody-producing cells from the blood of kids who’ve had COVID-19. By studying the genetic sequence of those cells, they can figure out which parts of the virus the antibodies are targeting. The new vaccines target the so-called “spike protein,” which gives the coronavirus its signature knobby crown. But it’s possible that children’s immune systems tend to focus on different proteins within the virus, Rowley says. If so, that focus could be what helps protect most kids from worse illness when they do get infected.

Eventually, what researchers learn about children’s response to the coronavirus might lead to new treatments or targets for vaccines, Rowley says. “Maybe we want to mimic some of the things that are going on in children for adults.” Researchers have also learned that MIS-C is different from Kawasaki disease in important ways. While Kawasaki disease targets the coronary arteries, which feed blood to the heart, MIS-C affects the heart muscle itself. Even though the two illnesses looked similar at first, “I think pretty much everybody accepts now that these are two separate disorders,” Rowley says. It’s just one of the ways that the virus has kept doctors and scientists constantly adapting to new information and letting go of their assumptions, Rowley says. “It’s been a lesson in humility.”

O N O U R WAY With about 10,000 employees in China in early 2020, Pfizer was closely watching the situation in Wuhan. “It was becoming increasingly clear that this virus was not going to be contained, that it was going to spread,” David Moules ’82 says. “And that for Pfizer and other companies in the biopharmaceutical sector, we were the ones that were going to need to come up with a solution.” Moules leads a group at Pfizer called U.S. Payer & Channel Access, which in short ensures that the company’s products are in the right place when people need them. His team was busy from the start of the pandemic. Even without treatments specific to the new virus, Moules says, about 75 Pfizer medicines saw sudden surges in demand. Many of those drugs were critical for treating COVID-19 patients in the ICU, including patients on ventilators. Demand for some of those drugs went up as much as eight times, he says. In April, another new demand came from the Navy hospital ship Comfort. It had arrived in New York Harbor with the intent of housing non-COVID patients. But the plan changed and the ship started receiving COVID patients — and needed medicines to treat them. “We had to jump into action pretty quickly after hours when we got those requests,” Moules says. The most famous product Pfizer is delivering now, of course, is its COVID-19 vaccine, the first one to win an EUA from the Food and Drug Administration in December 2020. The project was in the works by mid-March. Pfizer had already partnered with the German company BioNTech and decided to move forward together with developing a vaccine against the new

THE STORY OF OUR LIVES Peter Reiss ’93 has been filming news and documentaries for decades, but he’s never before conducted an interview like the one he did with National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci. The night before the interview, Reiss’ film crew went into a hotel suite near the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and set up their camera, lights, and other equipment. Then they left. In the morning, Fauci entered the hotel suite, took off his mask, and sat down. From a second hotel room, the film crew activated the camera remotely. Reiss appeared on a video screen and began asking Fauci questions. “It is a regular interview — it’s just that no one else is in the room,” Reiss says. Filming this way let Reiss ensure the production of his new documentary was as safe as possible. Other interviews happened outdoors with minimal crew members, who were masked, distanced, and recently tested. All the precautions “made it incredibly difficult,” Reiss says. But it was the only way to tell the story he wanted to tell: how researchers were creating the vaccines that will help end the pandemic.

coronavirus. Scientists would use mRNA technology that they’d been researching for influenza. “It’s remarkable to see the speed from the time that the virus’ genetic sequence was first understood to getting an EUA in December,” Moules says. “Frankly, I’ve never seen anything like it.” Even before the vaccine was approved, Pfizer took a gamble by beginning to manufacture it in large quantities. Moules’ team had to help plan the logistics of getting vials of vaccine all around the country — and even to the U.S. territories, as Pfizer’s government contract stipulated — while keeping it extremely cold. Pfizer needed to work with a company called McKesson, which the U.S. government had contracted to supply kits that go along with the vaccines. The kits include items like needles, surgical masks, and vaccination record cards. The McKesson kits would have to arrive at sites first, followed by the boxes of vaccine vials in dry ice. For shipments flying to the island territories, the logistics were even trickier. In November, before the vaccine had the green light from the FDA, Moules’ team began working on test runs. They shipped empty boxes to dozens of sites around the country to make sure there were no glitches in the process. These days, the boxes are full. “I can’t tell you the number of pictures I’ve received from colleagues, friends, family members getting their COVID vaccine,” Moules says. The events of the past year have brought his company’s purpose to life like nothing else could. “When this problem hit, governments around the world turned to this industry to basically solve this problem,” Moules says. “And I believe that we’re well on our way to doing it.”

Reiss began his career producing programming for television channels. In 2013, he launched his own production company called The Woodshed. Although he’s covered all kinds of topics, Reiss is especially interested in science. While following the news this summer about the race to develop COVID-19 vaccines, he approached the Discovery Channel about making a film on the subject. The result, The Vaccine: Conquering COVID, aired Feb. 18. “I feel like this is the story of our lives,” Reiss says. “One way or another, it’s hard to imagine a story that’s affected more people on this planet.” While documenting the vaccine race, he witnessed surprising and moving scenes. He watched members of the Colorado National Guard, for instance, racing against a threeminute timer to transfer about 200 vials of vaccine from their dry ice packaging into a freezer. If they missed any vials, they’d have to put the vaccine in the garbage (they didn’t). The interview with Fauci also took the crew aback. “We were all shocked at how open he was about talking about death threats against him and his family,” Reiss says. “He speaks very clearly and forcefully and openly about that, and I don’t think any of us were expecting that.”

But it was also essential to the story Reiss wanted to tell that he speak with everyday people — such as Jennifer Haller, a Moderna phase 1 trial volunteer who got the first COVID-19 vaccine shot in the United States. Haller was injected with the very same vaccine that people were lining up for in February, as Reiss’ film was about to come out. “It’s pretty amazing,” he says. Even though developing safe and effective vaccines in record time was an incredible scientific achievement, Reiss says, “none of that matters if regular, everyday people on the street aren’t willing to go into the hospital and roll up their sleeves.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 51

Business

The Shop Around Corner Thethe Shop Around the Corner Business

Dek or no?

52 Colgate Magazine Spring 2021

laura barisonzi

Endeavor

toopher and Boots were the childhood nicknames that Stephanie Goldstein ’97 and her sister, Elizabeth, were playfully called by their dad. Now it’s the name of Goldstein’s boutique, a lifelong dream in which she has invested her whole self, from picking out mermaid pencil pouches to developing clothing lines. The Manhattan shop sells sundry items — apparel for babies, toddlers, teens, and moms as well as toys and gifts — but the products constitute a curated collection handpicked by Goldstein. “Everything is tailored to the taste of our customers and to my taste,” she says. For the clientele, shopping at Stoopher & Boots is a personalized experience. Goldstein has come to know them well, and they know her. She lives around the corner from the store’s location on the Upper West Side, and she’s a constant presence in the shop. “My staff and I are good at remembering our customers,” she says. “We’re like elephants … we remember all the details.” If you’re a regular customer (as many are), they can guide your gift giving by telling you what leopard faux fur coat your friend’s daughter has been eyeing, other trends she’s following, and her size. They can give you the scoop on what toys a mom doesn’t want in her house and what others have already bought the child. This approach has helped Stoopher & Boots succeed for 10 years — doubling the size of the store two years ago and surviving through the pandemic, when New York City stores had to shutter for months and then limit in-store customers. Goldstein gained much of her business acumen in her 13-year career with the Fortune 500 company Accenture. Though she’s thankful for the training and foundation, Goldstein didn’t enjoy the work, which she characterizes as “human performance change management.” In her current role, she dedicates much longer hours, but is so enthused by her occupation that she jokingly says she feels like she’s retired. “It’s just so fun,” she says. Part of the attraction with opening her own shop was that Goldstein — who had been making and selling T-shirts online — could “stay crafty.” It started with embellishing and printing graphics on tops. Now, she has several clothing lines that she sells in the shop and to approximately 100 stores across the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Panama. The Sparkle line features rainbow hearts, sequin stars, and unicorns. With Tweenstyle, think tons of tie dye, animal

prints, and lightning bolts. Then there are teen boys’ tees — boasting sayings like “Nothin’ but net” and “Savage” — in the LCK line she codesigned with her boyfriend’s 13-year-old son (and named for his initials). Running a business during the quarantine last spring was difficult, but Goldstein made the most of the situation. She began making face masks from super soft, boldly printed fabrics. Fortunately, Stoopher & Boots already had a website where people could make purchases for curbside pickup or shipping. But her staff refocused their online marketing to targeted email blasts and Instagram posts. They also found new ways to keep customers engaged, like downloadable coloring sheets and other free

TRAINING

Connecting Science and Sport Chris Case ’99 develops a smart coaching site to help athletes get fitter and faster. n his early years as a competitive athlete, Chris Case ’99 had some notable accomplishments. He ran nationally in races starting at age 10, was the 1993 Connecticut state champion in the 2-mile track event, and went to the Junior Olympics. But he never had sophisticated coaching. “I didn’t know the first thing about training,” Case says. Now, the science/sports journalist and former top amateur bike racer has that knowledge and shares it with athletes worldwide. In early 2020, Case partnered

Brad Kaminski

Chris Case (left) has a blood sample taken by an exercise physiologist to measure lactate.

activities to entertain kids stuck at home. Goldstein continued providing personalized shopping, although it was more time consuming because it was done via texting and phone calls. She also kept up with her clientele by offering a virtual fashion class with one of the local schools, where she asked students for feedback on designs for the fall. Looking toward the future, as fashion and retail always do, Goldstein has started making room for vacation wear. She herself rarely takes days off (“Christmas and July 4”), but that’s because, Goldstein says, “I’m doing what I love, and I’m so thankful that I have the support of the community to do that.” — Aleta Mayne with exercise physiologist Trevor Connor to launch Fast Talk Laboratories, a Boulder, Colo.-based company focused on sciencebased coaching for endurance athletes. “Fast Talk Labs is a virtual performance center for people to tap into,” Case says. “Especially in the midst of a pandemic, people still want to train and be healthy, and they’ll race again. So we give them all the tools they need to be healthier and faster.” The paid subscription service offers articles, videos, and workshops with coaches, researchers, and exercise physiologists, along with live (virtual) training and webinars. Topics cover everything from race-day nutrition to training intensity zones. Case leads training sessions, writes articles, and interviews guests. “I like to investigate how to get healthier and faster using science-based knowledge and education to get there. I want people to understand that they can become better athletes if they become thinking athletes and know the research behind it.”

Fast Talk Labs grew out of Fast Talk podcast, a weekly show cohosted by Connor and Case that explores the science behind endurance sports. “Whether it’s how to enhance recovery or determining your aerobic versus anaerobic threshold, we get really nerdy,” Case says. “Our audience has a pretty voracious appetite for the ‘why’ of certain things.” At the time Fast Talk Labs launched, Case was wrapping up his career as managing editor of the bike racing magazine VeloNews. It’s where he met Connor, who wrote a training column and ended up coaching Case. “Once I witnessed [Connor’s] methods and then started working with him, I realized what sophisticated coaching was all about.” In September 2015, Connor coached Case for the prestigious Hour Record, where cyclists individually ride as many laps as they can around a velodrome. “I became a lab rat, documented how I trained, then attempted the record,” says Case, who by the end could barely hold up his head. “It was the most gruesome thing I’ve ever done to myself.” (He rode 45.927 kilometers in one hour, which would have set a national record for the 35- to 39-year-old group. The record wasn’t official, however, because there were no cycling federation officials present.) Case’s original career path was science, having majored in neuroscience and art at Colgate. After graduating, he earned a National Institute of Mental Health fellowship and studied schizophrenia for two years, then worked at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center researching Parkinson’s disease. The bulk of his time was spent prepping monkey brains for slides; disgusted and bored, he decided to refocus and apply to a journalism graduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. “I was obsessed with National Geographic and photojournalism as a kid,” he explains. He started bike racing during graduate school and quickly moved up the ranks. After graduating in 2006, Case did freelance photography, became creative director at a mountaineering museum, and then edited and designed an outdoor recreation and conservation magazine in Colorado. There, he devoted even more time to cycling, eventually winning silver at the 2013 UCI Masters Cyclo-cross World Championships. Case stopped racing two years ago, and now he and his wife enjoy cycling adventures with their 5-year-old daughter. He commutes via bike to his Fast Talk Labs offices. “[When I ride,] I let my mind go where it wants to go,” he says. “A successful bike ride allows for contemplation and relaxation — it’s good medicine.” — Anne Stein Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 53

Music

‘Indifying’ the Industry Shav Garg ’15 is revolutionizing the music business in favor of artists with his start-up platform, indify.

t 15, Shav Garg ’15 dreamed of being a musician. He wrote songs on GarageBand and performed on his acoustic guitar, but a music career seemed out of reach. He had no connections and understood that the industry was “stuck in a private equity era where music firms offer one-size-fits-all superstar deals that are 85% in favor of the label,” he says. Even then, he recognized the need for change. Shav (as he’s known in the industry) foresaw an open-source model that would level the playing field for artists and put their interests first. A decade later, he would create the music platform indify to do just that. While he was a student at Colgate, Shav interned at Warner Music Group and the Indian streaming platform Saavn, where he “realized that streaming was going to take

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over the world as the main form of music consumption.” He was right. Distribution services have since enabled artists from throughout the world to upload their work and reach an unprecedented number of listeners within hours, creating “an industry middle class that is exploding and going to define a renaissance of music for the next 10 years,” Shav says. During his senior year, Shav proposed to childhood friends Connor Lawrence and Matthew Pavia that they create an algorithm that would comb through data from YouTube, SoundCloud, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Spotify to anticipate the next big music stars. “People get scared of data,” Shav, who majored in economics, allows. “But in this case, data is the fans who are voting for whom they relate to. We don’t sit in an

office and tell you whom to relate to. That’s the democracy in the music industry that’s giving artists leverage for the first time against archaic institutions.” They developed the algorithm in Colgate’s Thought Into Action incubator program and participated in the 2015 Entrepreneur Weekend competition judged by Jessica Alba, MC Hammer, and leadership from BuzzFeed, Warby Parker, and Rent the Runway. They won the competition — and $25,000 to start indify, which they developed in Shav’s parents’ basement after graduation. By that fall, they had a working version of indify — and discovered their first star. The algorithm surfaced a 17-year-old musician in El Paso, Texas. He was writing songs in his bathroom and recording on his cell phone — but his music had reached 20,000 plays in just a few weeks, and his single “Location” quickly hit more than 100 million streams; today, it’s reached more than one billion. indify featured him on its editorial channels and forecasted the meteoric rise of the artist now known as Khalid. As indify predicted the careers of more superstars like Billie Eilish and Post Malone, record labels, talent agencies, streaming services, and music companies began signing up for the platform, eager to discover the next big stars. Shav and his partners had accomplished their original mission to democratize the industry, but they were still frustrated by traditional label deals that exploit musicians. They expanded indify from a discovery tool into a connectivity platform through which musicians can assemble a team of lawyers and funding, management, and digital marketing partners, and draw up contracts all in the same space. The contracts as outlined by indify put artists first with a 50/50 split and a clause that musicians retain creative control. As Rolling Stone stated in a 2020 article, “indify’s new approach is one of the most concrete attempts at changing the way artists are treated.” Despite his success as an entrepreneur, Shav says, “people identify me as an artist first.” His indie-pop album, too pretty for sunshine, released under the name prettyboyshav, has hit six million plays, and his next album comes out this spring. “My 15-year-old self knew he was exceptionally talented at music, but didn’t have the opportunity to be a musician because it was an unrealistic dream,” he says. “It’s my dream that indify will enable the next [generation of] 15-year-olds to be able to tell their parents, ‘I want to be a musician,’ and for that to be as normal as being an accountant.” — Lara Ehrlich

laura barisonzi

endeavor

Documentary

A Troubadour’s Humanitarian Legacy Jason Chapin ’86 remembers his father, Harry Chapin, in a new film about the famous musician.

ing along now to Harry Chapin’s heart-tugging hit “Cat’s in the Cradle”; you know the words: “The cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, little boy blue and the man in the moon….” That sweet, sad song from the 1970s has launched a million tears and 50 years of pop-culture references. But a new documentary, coproduced by his son Jason Chapin ’86, shows that Chapin’s hit songs may not be his most important legacy. As the late Harry Chapin was topping the charts with hits like “Taxi” and “W.O.L.D.,” he was also throwing his considerable energy into humanitarian causes, especially global hunger. “My dad thought it was obscene that millions of people were food insecure,” Jason says. At the height of both his popularity and his activism, Harry Chapin was performing 200 concerts a year, half of them benefits, and giving much of his money away. “The money flows through me,” he says in archival footage in the film. The documentary presents Chapin as a charming, committed, nonstop talker whose personal credo, “When in doubt, do something,” gives the film its title. As Harry’s older brother, singer Tom Chapin, says, “My brother wanted to be more than a great singer/songwriter. He wanted to change the world. And he did.” Along with hunger and peace activist Bill Ayres, Chapin cofounded World Hunger Year (now WhyHunger) and persuaded President Jimmy Carter to create the Presidential Commission on World Hunger, on which he served. He also founded Long Island’s first food bank, which continues

My dad thought it was obscene that millions of people were food insecure.

today as Long Island Cares/The Harry Chapin Food Bank. Chapin’s fame was framed by tragedy when, at age 38, he died in a fiery car accident on the Long Island Expressway. Despite the drama of his life, a film about his career and devotion to social causes had never been made. Documentarian Rick Korn changed that. He enlisted Jason to assist in fundraising and connecting Korn to family members, musicians, and other key players in Harry’s life, among them Billy Joel, Pat Benatar, Robert Lamm, and Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC. Longtime friend Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont says in the film, “If we could harness Harry’s energy, we could solve all the world’s problems.” Another dominant chord is the influence of family, both the intellectual and musical family of Harry’s youth in Brooklyn and, later, as the father of five in a close-knit family. Jason and his four siblings share memories of their “action dad,” who loved playing and watching sports and who, despite a frenetic road schedule, was deeply involved in their lives. His widow, Sandy — who wrote the poem that became “Cat’s in the Cradle” — “gave Dad his best ideas,” Jason says. As a kid, Jason took his dad’s fame in stride. “You only have one childhood, so it was all pretty normal to me,” he says. He was 17, about to begin his senior year in high school, at the time of his dad’s death. That fall, he applied early decision to Colgate, where he focused on economics and political science. While Jason didn’t inherit his father’s musical drive, he did inherit his desire to make the world a more equitable place. He has devoted his career to

helping people get training and jobs to build economically sustainable careers. “I get to work with people who really care and for people who really need it,” Jason says of his role as director of workforce development at Westchester County Association in New York — where he lives with his wife, Christina Stafford ’89 Chapin, and their three children. He also serves on the board of the Harry Chapin Foundation, which provides grants to support arts in education, community education, and sustainable agriculture programs. Harry Chapin: When in Doubt, Do Something has made several best-of-2020 lists and is streaming on numerous platforms; proceeds go in part to the Harry Chapin Foundation and WhyHunger. “Our hope is that those who see the film look at my dad’s life and hear his message that everyone can do something,” Jason says. “Everyone can have an impact.” — Elise Gibson

Spring 2021 Colgate Magazine 55

13 Oak Drive Hamilton, NY 13346-1398

In This Issue

Make a documentary about musician Harry Chapin p.55

Alienate yourself: Explore the possibility of life on Mars p.20

Go backstage at a P!nk concert with her manager p.100

Use data science to make predictions about a global crisis p.47

Facilitate multi-milliondollar deals to build renewable projects p.97

Join 17,392 prospective students in applying to Colgate p.10

Break Colgate’s pole vault record p.17

Discuss bipartisanship with former congressmen p.13

It’s 5 p.m. and the kids are hungry. Why not make tagliatelle? p.91

At the Air Force Research Laboratory, oversee 11,200 employees p.98

Get chased by dolphins on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway p.6

jill calder

Skydive with your mom p.26

Saddle up on the ChampsÉlysées and race in the Tour de France p.8