Rebecca Chopp reflects on tenure as Colgate president

As President Rebecca S. Chopp prepares to depart Colgate and the Chenango Valley after seven years, nostalgia has officially set in.

“I walk out of my office and everything is blooming, and the gardens are turning pink and yellow, and white, and I think, why am I leaving this place?” Chopp said in a recent video interview with geography professor Ellen Kraly. “Living here is such a joy.”

The three-part video is engaging and frank as the two touch on many subjects — from the nature of Colgate’s interdisciplinary academic program and the ever-changing student body, to the university’s partnership with Hamilton, and the “unique ethos” that binds alumni to their alma mater.

Perhaps it’s bittersweet, then, that Chopp’s last official duty before becoming president of Swarthmore College is to attend Reunion this weekend.

While Chopp developed many close friendships during her tenure at Colgate, she and Kraly have a special bond. In 2004, two years after Kraly served on the presidential search committee, the two completed a rigorous three-day hike up Mount Baker in Washington State as a fundraiser for cancer research.

Five years after that bonding experience, they sat down to record Chopp’s parting thoughts about Colgate and hopes for the university’s future. The 48-minute interview is presented in three segments running from 10 to 15 minutes in length.

In Part I, Chopp recalls her charge to enhance and communicate “the academic richness” of Colgate. She talks about faculty-student dinners, institutes, interdisciplinary research, the Core curriculum, global learning, and other examples of “knowledge crossing traditional borders” at Colgate.

In Part II, they talk about Chopp’s most visible legacy: the new buildings on campus that created space for students to express themselves. Chopp says: “I think we probably have the best interdisciplinary science center, and I know we have the best IT center among our peers, and even more importantly, they’re packed (with students).”

Finally, in Part III Chopp reminisces about fall football games, the beauty of the landscape, the “irrepressibility of this place,” and upstate ice cream.

“People have assured me that they have ice cream in Philadelphia, but I have to say that I love ice cream and some of the best ice cream in the whole world is in this area.”