They’ve appeared on Oprah and helped bring the Dalai Lama to Colgate. They’ve coordinated the introduction of computers to campus and witnessed buildings being erected. They’ve collaborated with colleagues across disciplines and become mentors for students. In the Hamilton community, they’ve volunteered, and even served as village mayor. You’ve likely taken a class with at least one of these six professors who retired this year. Learn more about the decades they’ve spent at Colgate and the lasting legacies they leave behind.
Carrie Keating: Creative Connections
Ask Professor Carrie Keating what kind of psychologist she is, and she’s stumped, even after 44 years of teaching at Colgate.
“I couldn’t answer that question in the beginning of my career, and now it’s worse. I pursue questions about power, dominance, hierarchy, and leadership from a cross-cultural, cross-species, and maybe even an evolutionary, developmental point of view.
“I don’t know what you call that.”
You can call it very successful, for one thing. Keating, officially a professor of psychological and brain sciences, was honored in 2024 with Colgate’s top faculty award, the Jerome Balmuth Award for Teaching.
The award marked just one milestone in a career that has stretched far beyond the classroom. Keating has worked as a consultant teaching charisma and collaboration, and has been a media favorite who’s often asked to dissect politicians’ nonverbal cues and leadership styles.
She’s spoken to numerous groups — including preschool teachers, Los Alamos National Laboratory engineers, art museum docents, and business professionals — about what it takes to lead effectively.
“We’re primates, when you get right down to it. We respond to nonverbal cues — eye contact, posture, gestures — to judge who’s a good leader. It’s not only about what you say; it’s how you say it.”
Keating is particularly interested in charismatic influence, and she and her student researchers created a formula for that: To be perceived as charismatic, a person must look formidable, competent, and dominant. But, at the same time, they must exude warmth in order to appear receptive and be like someone people want to be around.
Keating explains that she and her student researchers measured the brain activity of people watching charismatic and non-charismatic political leaders for one of her studies. Politicians were shown speaking in 30-second clips, without any audio.
“When people watched charismatic individuals, their brains showed activity in both the approach and avoidance centers,” Keating explains. “That’s what we called ‘Come hither, but beware.’ It creates both attraction and caution. That’s key. If a leader is only threatening — conveys only avoidance — you don’t attach. But if there’s also a draw, some warmth, you follow. And that combination is often a more powerful bonding agent than pure warmth and receptivity alone.”
Charisma can unify or destroy, she believes, because good and bad charismatic leaders synchronize individual brain processes in ways that diminish individual identity and replace it with a powerful form of group identity and allegiance.
This type of research resulted in Keating often being called to comment in the national media, especially during political campaigns. She’s appeared on programs such as The Oprah Winfrey Show (twice), PBS’s Scientific American Frontiers, Dateline NBC, and ABC’s Good Morning America and What Would You Do?.
Even in the final chapter of her academic career, Keating continues to explore new territory. She is currently working with student researchers; Sinhaeng Lee, assistant professor of music; and Bruce Hansen, professor of psychology and neuroscience, on a study exploring whether musical conductors, as leaders, synchronize the brain-wave patterns of their follower-singers.
“Do charismatic leaders, like a conductor, bring together individuals so that their brain waves actually synchronize with one another?” asks Keating. “And do they now perceive themselves as a member of a collective group?”
The research project reflects Keating’s love for interdisciplinary inquiry, and she is thrilled that it’s one of the first projects under the auspices of the Robert H.N. Ho Mind, Brain, and Behavior Center. Keating worked closely with Professor of Biology Krista Ingram and others to garner support for the center that is housed in Olin Hall but inspires innovative scholarship across campus, thanks to alumni funding through the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative.
Olin Hall has been Keating’s on-campus home since arriving on the Hill in 1981.
Now, she feels it’s the right time to step away. She plans to spend more time with family in Colorado and Washington, D.C., and explore what involvement in political issue campaigns might look like for her, whether that’s consulting or stuffing envelopes or whatever is needed.
“I’ve had a wonderful career here, a wonderful job,” she says. “But it’s time for me to move over.”
Keating Quotables
What does leadership look like for men vs. women?
“It’s a real dilemma for women. If a woman behaves the way a man does in leadership, we don’t like her very much. We don’t call her dominant — we call her domineering. Leadership is skewed masculine; it’s interpreted as a masculine trait. But in fact, the data show that when women leaders are evaluated by subordinates, they’re often rated more highly. They’re seen as better leaders or more charismatic. They tend to show more care, invest more in staff development — they bring strengths that masculinity doesn’t always include.”
How did you prepare for your TV appearances?
“I don’t have the kind of natural confidence some people have for TV. But being blinded by the TV lights made me forget about myself and helped me focus on getting my ideas across.”
What additional classes do you think can benefit students studying psychological science?
“I tell them basic acting. Put yourself out there. Fall down, get up, and see how that feels. If it’s not clicking or resonating on stage, how do you improvise and get ideas for how to energize other people? It’s really nonverbal behavior training.”
— Tim O’Keeffe
Bob McVaugh: Professor, Mayor, and More
When Professor of Art Bob McVaugh was hired at Colgate, he was to teach European modern art — eventually, however, he fell into a different niche: architecture. Over the course of his 45-year teaching career, he became a keystone of the minor program.
Hired in 1980, McVaugh’s transition into teaching about architecture was motivated by his background. “I come from a builder’s family, and so much of my early life was spent on construction sites, helping my father, working summers,” he says. When he inherited the American and modern architecture courses offered by his predecessor, Eric Van Schaack, he put his own practical spin on them.
“It’s one thing to study architecture from books and slides, but it’s a very different thing to get a physical and sensory alertness,” he argues. “For this reason, the American architecture course transitioned into a campus architecture course, and then the campus architecture course became a Colgate architecture course — Colgate being our workshop.”
As it took shape, the offering became a staple in the Department of Art and Art History, allowing students to fuse their own experiences with Colgate’s architectural history. McVaugh also taught a variety of interdisciplinary courses at Colgate, including one with Paul Pinet (geology and environmental studies) and Phil Mulry (computer science).
In the mid-1980s, McVaugh helped shape the artistic facets of Colgate’s Core Curriculum. “I insisted that there exists something called visual knowledge — that there are things that we know visually or experientially,” not only through verbal or mathematical language.
McVaugh’s fascination with pictorial art remained a prominent part of his career. In 1985 he was awarded the NEH Fellowship for College Teachers — a distinction that provided funding for his research on German romantic art in Europe. In subsequent years, McVaugh aided the NEH by serving as a reviewer for new applications. “I’ve loved meeting new colleagues and seeing what kind of work is being done out there,” he says.
Back in the Hamilton community, McVaugh spent the majority of the ’90s and early aughts as a member of several village organizations, including the Planning Board and the Library Board. “My good fortune in spending my career at Colgate is inseparable from my good fortune in spending my adult life in this remarkable community,” he says. When his kids were growing up, he coached youth soccer, ice hockey, and baseball.
But from 2015–17, McVaugh did something unprecedented: He served as the village mayor while continuing his work in the classroom. It was a role that his wife, Sue, had filled from 2005–11.
“We got deeply involved in the community,” he says. “It’s an extraordinarily rich organism, the village, and it was a privilege to be in the middle of it for a while.”
McVaugh’s architectural expertise also enabled his contributions to the evolution of the campus. He sat on selection committees for the architects of Persson Hall and Ho Science Center, and he was actively involved in developing the Campus Plan of 2013, which assessed the state of the campus and its future potential.
Looking ahead, McVaugh plans to spend approximately five more years in Hamilton, during which time he will wrap up and organize his work on Colgate’s campus for future researchers. Afterward, he and his wife may retire to the Philadelphia area, where they both grew up.
“Altogether, you can feel extremely good about something and happily transition from it,” he says. “It was 45 years of getting up in the morning and doing exactly what I wanted to do. There aren’t a lot of people in the world who have had that.”
— Tate Fonda ’25
Inside the large filing cabinets of Little Hall’s Visual Resources Library, Professor Bob McVaugh has assembled a collection of approximately a thousand architectural drawings related to Colgate’s architectural history — “treasures for anyone interested in the historical evolution of the campus.” Consisting of blueprints, maps, and more, the collection will be cataloged by McVaugh in the coming months in preparation for its move to Special Collections and University Archives, where it will be available for future researchers.
Alice Nakhimovsky: Primary Source
Alice Nakhimovsky, distinguished chair in Jewish studies and professor of Russian and Eurasian studies, took a temporary teaching position at Colgate in 1975. Months turned into years and then into decades. Now, the campus knows her as one of Colgate’s earliest female professors; the editor of the book Repression, Reinvention, and Rugelach: A History of Jews at Colgate; and a longtime teacher in the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum.
Nakhimovsky is a prolific writer and translator. She has authored or co-authored nearly a dozen books and another dozen academic articles, alongside numerous additional articles and reviews. Her book Dear Mendl, Dear Reyzl: Yiddish Letter Manuals in Russia and America (Indiana University Press), co-written with Roberta Newman, won a 2015 National Jewish Book Award. Nakhimovsky spent six years on the editorial board of the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, and she co-created a virtual museum that documents life in Russia’s communal apartments, with Colgate professor Nancy Ries, Cornell’s Slava Paperno, and Ilya Utekhin of the European University at St. Petersburg (Russia).
Nakhimovsky’s tenure at Colgate underscores the fact that great professors are themselves lifelong learners, who discover new areas of interest, investigate deeply, and then share their discoveries with generations of students. It’s the spirit that she is carrying into her emerita years as she looks forward to a variety of academic projects and editing work, including Colgate’s own faculty handbook.
Nakhimovsky provides a brief sketch of her long career:
How did you arrive at the University?
I came to Colgate in 1975 because someone got sick, and [the University] needed somebody close by to teach Russian — I was at Cornell. I did that for two months, and then a job opened up, a two-year position. After that, I left for a year to take care of [our first baby], and when I came back, I received a letter saying, “You’re coming up for tenure next year.” I was not tenure-track until I got this note — I was a lecturer and then a visiting assistant professor. But I had written a lot, because I could, so I got tenure. It was a different time.
You taught many courses at Colgate. Did any stand out?
I think that one of the best things — and I’m grateful to Colgate for this — is the Core. I went through school myself by teaching the Core. When I first came, there was a course that was, in essence, a comparative literature course. There were wonderful people in [the] German and Italian [departments], and we read the books, and we had a small group and discussed these things. That turned into what was called CORE 152. Then I went into CORE 151. I spent the summer before the first class session reading the material, and then I taught the course until it ended — roughly 20 years later.
How did you make the transition from learning the material yourself to teaching it?
I do my best to read the secondary literature, and I like doing that. Otherwise, I’m trained in reading texts. I can read texts, and I understand how meaning is made. I know what the approach is, and then you just engage everybody in conversation to the best of your ability. Now that I am not teaching anymore, I can say I don’t think I ever walked into a classroom without having read the text again, never once. Not for any class, not even for a work that I had read a million times.
You taught Russian literature in the classics department for years. How did you move into Jewish studies?
We have to go back to Roland Blum, professor of philosophy. In the fall of 1983, Roland said, “You’re going on sabbatical, OK. You’re going to be replaced by Shimon Markish.” In my ignorance, I did not know who this was. He was the son of the poet Peretz Markish, one of 13 poets executed by Stalin on Aug. 12, 1952 — the Night of Murdered Poets. Sima [Markish] came, and I sat as a student in that classroom where I spent the rest of my life teaching, 201 Lawrence. Afterward, Sima said to me, “You are going to do it: You are going to write a book about Jews in Russian literature, and I will give you all my notes.”
I wrote Russian-Jewish Literature and Identity (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), and it was a minor big deal — because it was the first time anybody had ever opened up that subject. Neil Grabois was president of Colgate, and he decided to create the Jewish Studies Program; I could do literature. Students came from everywhere. Those courses always filled, so I had this playground and it was so fun.
— Mark Walden
Steven Kepnes: Rooted in Faith
Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies Steven Kepnes was a “child of the ’60s” — a time, he recalls, when “religion was something that many people turned to.” The religious legacies of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. formed parentheses around his studies at the University of Chicago. “Religion was in the air that I breathed as a student,” he says, “and then it grew into my career.”
Thirty-seven years later, Kepnes looks back on his time at Colgate, where his work on comparative scripture, hermeneutics, and modern Jewish philosophy flourished.
Kepnes began his work at the University in 1988, initially offering courses on Jewish philosophy. One of his most enduring offerings, Faith After the Holocaust, became a staple of the religion department, drawing more than 100 students at its peak.
“The best thing about being a professor at Colgate is our students,” says Kepnes, who has chaired the religion department and served as director of the Jewish Studies Program. “They have continually surprised me with new insights into texts I thought I knew.”
As Kepnes’ research interests later widened to include the study of comparative religions, he developed a course on scriptural reasoning, which explored Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs in dialogue. “There is, if you will, an essence to religion, to all religions, that favors human value,” he says.
Across his career, Kepnes’ passion for interfaith engagement motivated his travel to regions with long-standing religious histories. From 1993–95 he spent two sabbaticals in Israel, where he served as a fellow at Hebrew University and the Shalom Hartman Institute. In 2011 he taught for a semester in Rome at Gregorium University, where he shared in interfaith dialogue during a conference at a historic monastery.
“I’m an active Jew, so for me, religion is very much a part of my personal life,” says Kepnes. “But it has also fueled my contributions and work for peace among religions.” In 2008 Kepnes helped organize a visit from the 14th Dalai Lama, who spoke at Sanford Field House. “I was impressed with the Dalai Lama’s humaneness, humility, wit, and warmth,” he says. “I learned that spirituality can be embodied in the demeanor and presence of a person, no matter their beliefs.”
From 2013–23, Kepnes deepened his commitment to interfaith engagement through his role as the director of Chapel House. During a 2023 renovation, Kepnes helped conceive and build the meditation garden, a place where visitors are invited to enjoy the sounds of nature.
In the time following his retirement, Kepnes plans to continue writing and traveling. He has two forthcoming books: Reviving Jewish Theology (Cambridge University Press) and a co-authored text, Scriptural Reasoning: Abrahamic Interfaith Practice (Routledge). Next year, Kepnes will also begin a fellowship centered around environmental sustainability and Judaism at Bar-Ilan University. “I’m retiring, but I’m not retiring from my academic interest, my writing, and my interactions with other scholars,” he says.
— Tate Fonda ’25
Dan Schult: Show Your Work
Charles G. Hetherington Professor of Mathematics Dan Schult has a practical streak that runs through his career as an educator and researcher. But don’t be tempted to equate the practical with the mundane.
Schult earned a master’s in economics at Princeton. He was working on his PhD when he decided to change course, leave the university, and join the Federal Reserve Bank in Minneapolis. After three years with the Fed, though, he missed academia and returned to campus, this time at Northwestern University, to earn a doctorate in applied math.
But Schult had conditions. “I wanted my research to be connected to the real world,” he says. “And I wanted to teach undergraduates.” He pursued the first goal through his dissertation research, which looked at patterns of fire extinction. Schult and his dissertation adviser were trying to find the precise circumstances in which fire would either go out or not start. “When you turn down the flame on a gas stove very slowly, you’ll see it pop-pop-pop and then go out,” Schult says. “That’s a pulsation, a bifurcation, a change in the behavior of the flame as you get close to extinction.” Pulsations, bifurcations, and changes can be expressed in mathematical terms, and that was the work behind his PhD.
The results would have important implications for fire safety. But closely and mathematically observing the finer points of the “pop” was hard if the flame was pushed around by moving air. Making observations in a more stable environment with less air flow, like a vehicle in space, was preferable. NASA agreed and funded the effort. “Perfect for us — we wanted to look at extinction limits without fluid flow around it, which can make it turbulent,” says Schult. “Good for them — they want to keep astronauts safe.”
PhD in hand, Schult moved on to his second goal: teaching undergraduates. And that’s how he came to Colgate. “Colgate’s model is the teacher-scholar,” says Schult, who was hired in 1996 to teach differential equations and applied math. Schult worked toward deploying computers within the department and teaching students to use them to solve problems in courses like Applied Math for Social Sciences.
“I was nervous for my first class,” Schult recalls. “What’s amazing is that, 28 years later, the first class of the semester, I still get a little bit nervous. It’s an interesting, fun kind of day, but the adrenaline gets pumping.”
By bulking up syllabi with computer work and expanding the number of available courses, including Mathematical Biology, Schult helped the math department launch a new applied math major in 2017. There are now more applied math majors than math majors, and a movement is underway to create a statistics major.
Even while teaching, Schult continued to pursue research with a purpose. Shortly after earning tenure in 2000, Schult took a sabbatical at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to work with researcher Mac Hyman. Hyman’s group was studying the spread of disease across human networks by modeling a bubonic plague attack on Portland, Ore. Schult began to apply the same principles to the spread of information across computer networks.
Schult also offered to help debug and innovate NetworkX, a popular Python-based application to help researchers across disciplines with their data analysis. NetworkX has been used by individuals and governments to track everything from failures in electric grids to six degrees of Kevin Bacon. Schult became the primary maintainer of NetworkX in 2015, and the collaboration continues to this day with a small group of Berkeley faculty colleagues — the app recently crossed 1 billion downloads.
Schult returned from Los Alamos with renewed energy, and he struck up decades-long research partnerships with Colgate professors Ken Segal, Patrick Crotty, Jason Myers, Bruce Hansen, and others to look closely at patterns in technology and in nature. Their investigations have led to potential innovations in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease and to advancements in neuromorphic computing, which teaches computers to work like human brains and send information across super-cold electronic synapses rather than storing it on inefficient hard drives and in RAM. Schult has also facilitated the work of countless colleagues by serving as the director of the Picker Interdisciplinary Science Institute (ISI), an internal grant maker for new research projects. Picker ISI backing helps investigations gain momentum and attract outside investment.
By bringing undergraduates into these research efforts, Schult has been able to embrace intellectual freedom and take risks. According to Schult, there is pressure to ensure that PhD projects end with a publishable result. Time commitments and career implications demand careful consideration. But undergraduates will only spend a semester or two on any one problem, and they are early in their learning curve, so they and their faculty advisers can follow their curiosity with less regard for the nature of the outcome. Whether the result is positive, negative, or undetermined, the purpose is for the student to learn the process.
Schult has a singular and affable approach to explaining and exploring the inscrutable. It’s as though he has zero doubt that any literature major can grasp the basics of chaos theory — probably because he’s made it happen more than once. His gift as a researcher comes in part from his ability both to share the excitement of a new idea and multiply its impact. Whether it’s studying fire, networks, or neurons, he has managed to pass along the love of applied math to generations of undergraduates, increase the reach of his department, and show proof that a liberal arts education can blend creativity and practicality in ways that advance humanity.
— Mark Walden
Chris Nevison: From Plato to Parallel Computing
After more than 50 years of teaching mathematics and computer science at Colgate, Chris Nevison reflects on his career with an unexpected favorite: a “great books” course.
“I taught it several times, the Greek philosophers like Plato on up to Galileo,” says Nevison. “Teaching outside my department was one of the things I loved most about my time at Colgate.”
It is within the Department of Computer Science, though, that Nevison witnessed dramatic changes and — as one of the early members of the department — played an important role in developing courses that prepared students for the rapidly evolving field.
Nevison had arrived on campus in 1974 to teach math but would join the fledgling computer science department in 1983 after conversations with Professor Tom Brackett.
“I was using a computer in my research and simulation work, and I was helping Tom interview potential new faculty members. Eventually I said, ‘You know, I’d be interested in switching to computer science myself.’”
Brackett took him up on it, and Nevison started teaching introductory courses.
Nevison quickly became interested in and created a new course in parallel computing. “Today’s phones and laptops have multiple processors that can do many things at once,” he explains. “But early on, the challenge was how to connect multiple processors to work on a single problem. It’s a fascinating area, the programming that goes on behind the scenes.”
Nevison would also create a course in computer organization — one of his favorites — that examined the electronics and inner workings of computers.
He recalled how the University’s first computer center was in the basement of the O’Connor Campus Center in the 1970s. There was one main computer, approximately 6 feet tall, and a dozen or so terminals that resembled old-style televisions with keyboards attached.
“It just boggles the mind how things have changed,” he says. “Every few years, the computing power available has doubled, pretty much up until the present day.”
How did he and the other members of the department stay current, considering the breathtaking evolution of computing power?
By doing what every good professor does, says Nevison, and by putting the skills he learned in earning a master’s and PhD from Stanford University to good use.
“You go to conferences, you read the journals, and you look at new textbooks that incorporate the advances into what you’ve been teaching. Really, it’s taking the training you get as a PhD student and continuing to learn throughout your career.
“But the fundamental principles don’t change. The idea of developing algorithms for different types of problems is the same, for example. It’s just that now you can take on much bigger problems.”
While he’s enjoying his phased retirement — including the time he’s spent hiking in the Grand Tetons and exploring Spain with his wife, Barbara Wells (who also taught computer science at Colgate for four years) — Nevison says he appreciates more than ever the opportunity he had to work with such outstanding faculty across all the disciplines.
“It’s been great to get to know faculty members from other departments and
get to work with them. It’s a part of the learning and teaching experience that makes Colgate special.”
— Tim O’Keeffe
Nevison volunteered with Southern Madison County Volunteer Ambulance Corps. for 16 years, first as a driver and then as an EMT.