From April through August, alumni relations offered “Staying Home With Colgate,” 35 programs that ranged from educational webinars to virtual social gatherings. The online programming provided more than 1,600 alumni with information, connection, and entertainment to replace in-person events.
Among the more popular webinars:
- As scientists were working tirelessly to understand the coronavirus, Associate Professor of Biology Geoff Holm provided a deep dive on COVID-19 in May. “The pandemic has laid bare the process of ‘scientific sausage making,’” he said.
“The actual process of science is, by necessity, slow. It takes time for the dust to settle and for consensus to coalesce around theories that stand up to repeat testing.” Holm serves as cochair of the Task Force on the Reopening of the Colgate Campus. - Mark Murphy ’77, president and CEO of the Green Bay Packers, offered his take on the impact of the pandemic on the NFL. “What makes the NFL so popular is that we have competitive balance because of revenue sharing, so even a team from little Green Bay can compete,” he said. “However this all shakes out, we’re going to make sure that it’s competitively equitable for all teams.”
- History buffs enjoyed “Exploring Colgate’s Diverse History” with Diane Ciccone ’74 and Jim Smith ’70. Ciccone said, “Jim’s book Becoming Colgate gives us a modern view of Colgate’s 200-year history. I wanted to focus my book Into the Light on the Black experience at Colgate. It turned out that while doing the research, we found that Colgate had a history of diversity from the very beginning.” Near the end of their back-and-forth, Smith stated, “I think what we’ve both found in this story is that there’s a great deal we can be proud of, but we have to temper that pride with the pain that is also clear in some of these stories, and anger that things didn’t proceed as people of goodwill might have hoped they would have proceeded. What our efforts have done is to write a more inclusive story.”
“The response has been great,” says Jillian Cole ’10, senior associate director of alumni relations. “Alumni have really enjoyed the opportunities to learn from faculty and alumni, and they are able to watch the recordings if they aren’t able to attend live.”
Virtual events will continue throughout the year. Recordings of past events and the upcoming schedule for Staying Home With Colgate can be found at colgate.edu/alumni.