Dear Members of the Colgate Community,
Section II of the Third-Century Plan explicitly focuses on supporting Colgate’s academic enterprise, stating,“Colgate must focus on building and maintaining a top-tier faculty, and supporting the creation of knowledge and its dissemination through teaching, publication, and public engagement.”
We’ve written about individual faculty chairs in the past, but it occurred to me that we’ve never shared a complete list of the new chairs that have been created thanks to the Campaign for the Third Century and the generosity of our alumni, family, and friends. So far, 14 of the planned 25 new chairs have already been realized, and they include:
- W. Bradford Wiley Chair in International Economics
- Carl Benton Straub ’58 Endowed Chair in Culture and the Environment
- Rebecca Chopp Chair in the Humanities
- Daniel C. Benton ’80 Endowed Chair in Arts, Creativity, and Innovation
- Peter L. and Maria T. Kellner Endowed Chair in Arts, Creativity, and Innovation
- Peter L. Kellner Third-Century Chair in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
- Himoff Family Chair in Legacies
- Sweet Family Chair
- Hurley Family Chair in Dialogue, Deliberation, and Decision Making
- Leary Family Chair in Environmental Studies
- Jarrett R. Turner ’04 Third-Century Chair
- Mark Siegel ’73 University Professorship
- Clifford Family Innovator in Residence
- Robert P. Straetz Jr. ’69 Third Century Chair
These endowed chairs create perpetual funding for the academic endeavor while freeing up endowment funds for other academic support, including improved pre-tenure leave, more funding for faculty travel, and increased research funding. In fact, new tenure-stream faculty in fall 2023 and fall 2024 received average start-up grant funding of more than $16,000. Funding for student summer research also continues to be robust, with more than two hundred grants awarded each year to both faculty-initiated and student-initiated research projects in 2023 and 2024.
These are just a few examples of the work in progress to strengthen the support of Colgate’s faculty members, and there is more to come. Thank you for taking a moment out of your day for this Third-Century Update, and be on the lookout for another update in November.
Respectfully,
Daniel DeVries
Vice President for University Communications