At a joyous gathering on October 14, the Colgate community formally welcomed Tracey E. Hucks ’87, MA’90, a nationally regarded scholar of American religious history and Africana studies, back to campus as provost and dean of the faculty.
When announcing her appointment last May, President Brian W. Casey said of Hucks, “She is an intellectual of the first order and a formidable scholar across a variety of fields. At both Haverford and Davidson colleges, she has proved herself to be an astute and creative academic administrator. I look forward to working with her to support Colgate’s faculty and to strengthen and enrich Colgate’s academic enterprise.”
At the October event, before several community members presented gifts and mementos to Hucks, a slate of admiring speakers sang her praises as they celebrated her return to serve as a leader on campus.
“I first had the pleasure of coming across Dean Hucks as a first-year at the 2014 ALANA banquet. I remember thinking, who is this beautiful black woman in a head wrap and African garb in Hamilton, N.Y.?” said Jehdeiah Mixon ’18. “I left the banquet not only in awe of Dean Hucks’s brilliance and her beautiful spirit, but also knowing that if she made it through Colgate, then so could I.”
Jovaun Woolford ’19 was also “glad to say that I’ve created a bond with Dean Hucks after our brief yet meaningful interaction stemming from her visit to campus last year” as the first participant in the two-week Alumni of Color Scholar-In-Residence program. “I remember talking with Dean Hucks about the connection of different African religions in things I find at home in my Baptist church on the north side of Chicago. She is very knowledgeable, wise, and helpful with the topics I am studying as well as with topics about life.”
Hucks’s faculty advisers, Harvey Sindima (philosophy and religion) and Chris Vecsey (religion, Native American studies), shared memories and observations of their former student-turned-academic leader.
Tipping water into a cup, Sindima poured libations to those “who are not physically present here, but certainly are rejoicing with us because they made who you have become. I pour a libation to your mother… to all the people of the Cherokee…that at last, at last, a daughter of the land has become a provost and dean of the faculty of Colgate University, a rare phenomenon in this country…and to your father, who taught you the spirit of grace, toughness, and resilience of the African peoples of the diaspora.”
Vecsey recalled his seminar on Navajo creation narratives, where Hucks “brought to life Navajo women’s puberty rituals by placing them in their mythological contexts, all the while serving her fellow students as a guide, role model, and inspiration. She raised the intellectual temperature of that class just by being in the room.
“When she graduated in 1987,” he continued, “I wrote, ‘It would not surprise me, given her talent and recognition as a student leader on campus, to find her in a position of political, academic, social, and religious prominence as an adult.’”
On having achieved that prominence and bringing it to serve her alma mater, Colgate’s Office of Undergraduate Studies (OUS) Scholars director, Suzanne Spring, remarked of Hucks — herself a former OUS Scholar: “Her faith in this institution gives me great hope. It makes me believe that many others … can call and claim this beautiful campus on a hill home, and can one day again imagine returning. Such belief is a great gift.”
Veronica McFall ’89, one alumna who has returned — as Colgate’s new assistant director of alumni relations for affinity and identity programs — said, “Tracey was part of that group of women who carried themselves in such a way that you wanted to carry yourself the same way: Head up high. Study hard. Be friendly. And always remember where you come from.”
Indeed, Hucks’s own remarks honored where she came from. “I give thanks for my unique Colgate experience,” she said. “I came to Colgate from the rich Mecca of Harlem, New York…And to my own sense of self-knowledge, I added academic knowledge imparted to me curricularly by what was then called GenEd, what was then the philosophy and religion department, what would later become women’s studies, and what was emerging as Africana and Latin American studies.
Hucks continued with a series of thank-yous — including to two classmates from the Class of 1987 present at the event, Howard Jackson and Karl Sims — punctuated with memories of her parents, her arrival and time as a Colgate student, and songs that served as the soundtrack to her student years.
“I am here now, returning a third time, in my epic journey with Colgate, with the opportunity to serve as provost and dean of the faculty at this time in its 199th year, before the celebration of its bicentennial. What an exciting time to be here.”