A Day in the Life

Presidents' Club hosts annual NYC event

Since 1819, each Colgate president has led the university forward in a way that was important for the time. In 2011, with President Jeffrey Herbst committed to protecting the “soul” of Colgate while significantly advancing it through a rapidly changing future, the April 29 Presidents’ Club dinner in New York City was the right time to honor them all.

Along with Herbst, who became Colgate’s 16th president a little less than one year ago, three past presidents attended the dinner and silent auction: Thomas Bartlett, Neil Grabois, and Rebecca Chopp, Colgate’s 12th, 13th, and 15th presidents, respectively. Interim presidents Jane Pinchin and Lyle Roelofs also were there.

Kim Avison Huffard ’87, chair of the Presidents’ Club, thanked members for their leadership support, which has so far totaled more than $25 million for fiscal year 2011. To date, there are 225 family memberships, which, Huffard said, “is especially important as we look ahead at inspiring the next generation of Colgate supporters.”

Herbst set an ambitious tone for the future, asking Colgate’s most loyal supporters, “How can we raise the bar even higher?” While characterizing that aspiration as “a privilege, when so many schools face dire challenges,” he also called it “an appropriately ambitious goal, given the Colgate DNA.”

Herbst said that Colgate’s long term success will be dependent on getting a handful of strategic priorities right: expanding financial aid and access, replacing retiring faculty with “new people with new ideas, new training, and new uses of technology,” defining and articulating what makes Colgate distinctive, evolving the university’s study abroad options, internationalizing the campus, and strengthening the Hamilton community.

“Where we are,” Herbst said, “is an incredibly important part of who we are. To forget our roots would be to lose our soul.”