An Ambitious Plan for Colgate
Colgate’s Bicentennial year (2018–19) marked an important symbolic milestone in the history of the University, a time to reflect on everything Colgate had done for two centuries to move into the upper ranks of American colleges and universities. It was a time for both reflection and celebration. Thousands of people came to the campus for an all-class reunion, where returning graduates not only connected with friends but also marveled at the changes to the campus.
At that reunion, I was able to speak to the alumni crowded into the packed chapel about Colgate’s future, and to give a sense of Colgate’s Third-Century Plan, which had just been endorsed by both the Board of Trustees and the Alumni Council.
Of course, within a few months of that reunion, Colgate and the world were facing a pandemic. We navigated COVID-19 throughout the 2020 spring semester and then the 2020–21 academic year. “Colgate Together” brought out our best; we managed an ongoing crisis well, with intelligence, strategy, and execution.
We are, of course, still managing this public health crisis. As I write this column, in early fall of 2021, Colgate (and much of the country) is wrestling with the Delta variant and with continued uncertainty about the course of this pandemic. Such a situation makes thinking about the future difficult.
But I do want to speak about a vision for the future of the University, one first suggested in the chapel that reunion weekend. I want to alert our alumni to an important transformation that, begun more quietly a few years ago and delayed a bit by the pandemic, is about to unfold both robustly and noticeably. We will do this through the Third-Century Plan. Through monthly emails and updated webpages, I want to ensure our alumni, parents, and friends know of recent activity undertaken in service of the plan. I also want our constituencies to know of the plan’s scale and ambition.
Through the Third-Century Plan, Colgate will, among other measures:
- dramatically expand our reach, improving both diversity and selectivity in admissions;
- increase financial support so Colgate is accessible and affordable to all;
- double our academic footprint, with new chairs, new academic initiatives, and new and renovated facilities;
- enhance our athletics facilities and programs; and
- redefine residential life around a core set of experiences available for all.
The plan will see the University invest more than $1 billion in financial aid, new academic programs, and new facilities throughout the next 10 years alone.
The Third-Century Plan contemplates the largest and most important transformation in the history of Colgate. It will both complete our physical campus and help us fully realize our potential to become one of the great institutions in the nation — and perhaps the most important undergraduate institution in the country.
An Important Opportunity
By most measures, Colgate is doing well — even historically well. Applications to the University are at an all-time high, and entering classes show the academic achievement and promise seen at the very best colleges and universities. Alumni support is also at an all-time high as measured not only by new gifts and pledges to Colgate, but also by engagement in events. The University’s endowment — standing at $1.3 billion as of this writing — provides an ever-stronger foundation for all we are doing.
But in my six years at Colgate, I have seen some institutional shortcomings relative to our peers. We have had an admissions approach that didn’t always throw the net as wide as possible to attract the leading students to the University. We have seen decades of underinvestment in arts and technology. We have a fragmented residential structure that divides more than it unites the student body. We’ve had an administrative culture that didn’t always operate at the highest possible level. Perhaps most importantly, we have had, at times, a lack of confidence in what we could accomplish and a lack of conviction in our ability to undertake awesome tasks and make profound changes.
Too often, Colgate has relied on reactive moves or quick fixes to address these challenges, when we really need a more strategic and sustained culture of excellence. And we must also note, this is a challenging time for the liberal arts as a whole. While addressing the important work needed to broaden access to this kind of education and working toward modernizing its curriculum, many institutions — including Colgate, at times — have lost sight of their purpose, by neglecting common values that transcend individual differences, replacing old orthodoxies with new ones, and shying away from the spirited debate and meaningful dialogue we need.
These challenges, however, present an important opportunity for Colgate to go about things differently. In tackling our particular challenges, we have a chance to do something bigger, and of greater long-term consequence, to build something none of our peers have achieved. Namely: A four-year liberal arts experience that binds people of diverse backgrounds together through a rational and comprehensive residential system, a dynamic core curriculum, and shared rituals and esprit de corps.
That’s not just a better Colgate — that’s an undergraduate experience on par with the very best colleges and universities in the country.
A Long-Term Perspective
The Third-Century Plan is an ambitious, proactive, long-term road map for realizing this University’s full potential. Through the efforts and investments it contemplates, we are reaffirming our commitment to the ideals of the liberal arts by instituting a systematic “core experience” that deepens the value of a Colgate education while expanding learning opportunities, advancing equitable access, and creating stronger social bonds.
We are bringing a residential system — like those seen at leading, large research universities — to the intimate academic and social setting of an elite undergraduate college. This will be seen in the full completion of the Residential Commons system for first-years and sophomores “up the Hill” — through which each student will live in a two-year set of halls that forms a foundational community. It then means undertaking the Lower Campus Project, which will call for the renovation of all Colgate-owned buildings that house our juniors and seniors and adding new housing and social spaces to Broad Street and College Street. With added social spaces and landscaping, this part of Colgate will truly feel like a part of campus. Finally, every student will have a place at Colgate, and all will be connected through the full completion of the campus on Broad Street.
We are bringing more leading faculty, cutting-edge research, and interconnected disciplines to campus to enrich this academic enterprise. We are making this education available to more of the best and brightest students, regardless of location or socioeconomic background through the Colgate Commitment, which caps the cost of an education to a family’s income and removes student loans from most of our students’ financial aid packages.
We’ve built an incredible — and unique — Division I athletics program that’s become a powerful asset. This, too, will be strengthened.
All of this will take time and significant new resources, but by doing this, we are elevating Colgate as both a physical place and an educational force.
The plan will see the University invest more than $1 billion in financial aid, new academic programs, and new facilities throughout the next 10 years alone.
The Pillars of the Plan
We’ve already taken some important steps to make the plan’s vision a reality, including:
- building new residence halls that have allowed us to have a Residential Commons system for all first- and second-years;
- creating a state-of-the-art career services center at Benton Hall; and
- elevating our competitiveness through the Colgate Commitment and our No-Loan Initiative.
Now we’re building on this momentum in a bigger and bolder way, with Colgate’s first comprehensive, long-term plan.
Competing for the Best Talent
The plan starts with the people who choose Colgate for such an important part of their lives. To fulfill our potential, we don’t just need to reach a wider, more diverse pool of students and faculty. We need the tools to compete more aggressively for the best — beyond the constraints of tuition, salary, or geography.
First, we have set out to completely redesign our financial aid — allowing us to cast a wider net for students of exceptional merit, no matter their background or socioeconomic status. This not only makes Colgate financially accessible to more lower-income students, but it also allows us to welcome back middle class students. Our first step, the Colgate Commitment, doubled our applicants for the Class of 2025 — and more than 50% more accepted students chose Colgate. The significance of this for our future cannot be overstated.
Second, we are aligning the financial resources, physical environment, and working conditions to attract more of the best faculty to Colgate. We will be seeking more than 25 new endowed chairs, the single largest such effort in our history — transforming this critical recruiting tool from a relative weakness to a new point of strength. We are creating new centers of gravity for cutting-edge research, such as the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative at Olin Hall.
We are providing all our faculty with more start-up funds, fellowships, and grants, giving them more freedom and support to achieve their breakout moments.
And I’ll remind you that all our investment in faculty directly benefits our students in a way no research university can match — Colgate students are not only taught by discipline leaders, but they are also frequently close collaborators with faculty members.
Improvements in Residential Life
The plan also imagines at Colgate something that only a handful of large, private universities do extremely well, but no private liberal arts school has implemented: a cohesive four-year residential program.
The liberal arts experience is, of course, about more than academics, and at Colgate, we’ve long benefited from a strong social culture. But life at Colgate hasn’t always been as equitable for all as it should, and like most of our peers, it has tended to be defined by reactive, ad hoc moves, rather than intentional, comprehensive planning.
Arguably the most significant component of the Third-Century Plan will thus be a systematic improvement to residential life through the implementation of a full residential system in which all have a place to develop a community, socialize, and gather.
We’re investing more than a quarter billion dollars into this effort, which includes:
- completion of the Residential Commons for first- and second-years, up the Hill;
- transformation of Broad Street into a residential village with desirable housing for all juniors and seniors, regardless of Greek or other affinities; and
- creation of new common dining, study, and community spaces that are designed to foster greater interchange and a stronger spirit of belonging within houses, among classes, and across social groups.
When completed, Colgate will be the first private liberal arts institution in the country to offer a cohesive, premier residential system — a critical foundation of the larger, core experience we’re building.
All our investment in faculty directly benefits our students in a way no research university can match.
A New Campus for Arts and Innovation
Reaffirming our commitment to the liberal arts doesn’t mean a static curriculum, it means applying the timeless ideals of intellectual curiosity, critical thinking, and respectful debate to our current world. To that end, the Third-Century Plan calls for the creation of a new Middle Campus, which will elevate the role of the arts and technology and infuse greater creativity into the Colgate experience as a whole.
This is long overdue — more students and faculty have distinguished themselves in these areas than many know, and it’s time we gave them better resources and a bigger platform. The new Middle Campus will position Colgate to deliver a multidisciplinary academic curriculum and learning experience that better prepares students for the 21st century. It will be home to an exciting range of creator and performance spaces, including:
- the new Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation, which will bring theater, dance, film, and media studies together with computer science, reflecting the growing interplay between culture and technology at large;
- a repurposed Dana Arts Center, restored to its original intent as a home for maker and practice spaces as well as a renovated Brehmer Theater; and
- a new performing and visual arts center.
Together, these will make Colgate a more fertile ground for ideas, culture, and debate, both within and across disciplines. And Middle Campus also represents a missing puzzle piece in the physical experience of the University, creating new connectivity between Upper Campus and Broad Street, a better flow of people, and an even more beautiful setting.
Doubling Down on Athletics
We have also long had a unique commitment to athletics among institutions of our size and are proud of our Division I status — both for what this means for our scholar-athletes and for what this says about our institutional ambition.
The Third-Century Plan will build on this strength, with major investments in:
- athletics scholarships and financial aid; and
- critical facility upgrades, including the Reid renovation.
A Category of One
By now you have a sense of the scope and ambition of the Third-Century Plan. By tackling old weaknesses and making historic investment into new strengths, we will physically complete our campus, from Residential Commons up the Hill to the “maker culture” of Middle Campus, down to a transformed Lower Campus — creating a stunning and uninterrupted experience of place.
We will inspire — and enable — more of the best and brightest students and faculty members to choose Colgate, drawing from more places and backgrounds. We will give every student a premier, equitable, four-year residential experience, something previously attainable only at the most prestigious universities and offered by none of our liberal arts peers. We will provide students with a uniquely rigorous, multidisciplinary education infused with creativity, innovation, and opportunities to participate at the highest levels in academics as well as athletics.
The Third-Century Plan will move Colgate forward, from “top tier but hard to define” into a category of one with a real point of view — advancing a more purposeful, 21st-century liberal arts experience and creating an even stronger sense of belonging for everyone who passes through this incredible place.
I look forward to this work with our trustees, faculty, alumni, staff, parents, and students. It will be extremely challenging. It will also be extremely exciting for all of us, and those of us who care about higher education in the United States.
Here we go.
— Brian W. Casey