Colgate Alumni - Get to Know

Each edition of the Scene features profile conversations with students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
In this edition:


Jean Brooks		Trustee Todd Brown '71


Alisandra Denton ’10		Christine Cronin Gallagher '83


Adrian Giurgea		Erik Ronning ’97

Jean Brooks

(Photo by Timothy D. Sofranko)

Cashier, Frank Dining Hall, Sodexo Food Service

• Has worked at Colgate for 30 years

• Estimated number of times she’s checked students in at Frank Dining Hall since it opened in 1984: 2,918,400

• Other dining halls where she’s worked: Bryan Dining Hall (before it was The Edge) and the Student Union (which was the main dining hall when she started in 1977)

• Received a Maroon Citation from the Alumni Corporation this year

• What she loves about Colgate: “The kids”

• Previous job: worked at Tefft’s Variety store in Earlville, N.Y.

• First job: waitress at Sautter’s Diner in Morrisville, N.Y.

• Family: Has been married for 49 years, with 4 children, 10 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandsons

• Favorite pastimes: craft work, crocheting, working in the garden, and visiting her children in Charlotte, N.C., and Roanoke, Va.

• On meeting the Dalai Lama during his visit on campus: “I was refilling Mr. Ho’s [Robert H.N. Ho ’56] water glass and he asked, ‘Have you been introduced yet, Jean?’ Then he took the water pitcher out of my hand, set it on the table, took me over, and said, ‘Your Holiness, I would like you to meet a good friend of mine, whom I see every time I visit Colgate.’ The Dalai Lama took my hand and he laid his cheek on it, and I thought, I’ve got to get away from here before I start crying. I was speechless, believe it or not.”

• If she could have lunch with anyone, who would it be? “My hand was kissed by the Dalai Lama. Who else is left?”

Trustee Todd Brown ’71

Joined Colgate’s Board of Trustees in 2002
Board committees: chair, student affairs; vice chair, budget; member of executive, nominating, and trustee development
Vice chairman of ShoreBank Corporation, the nation’s largest community development and environmental bank holding company

What do you get out of your experiences as a trustee?
I most enjoy the opportunity to work with a great group of trustees as well as President Chopp and her staff. We all come from different backgrounds and perspectives, but as Colgate alumni and parents, we share the common goal of making Colgate the best liberal arts university in the nation.

What do you bring to the table as a trustee?
My combination of business management, higher education, and other board experience gives me a somewhat unique lens on the issues we face as a board. I also bring an important perspective on what it is like being a minority at Colgate. Diversity is a key part of our strategy and something I care about deeply.

What is the key issue impacting higher education?
Making Colgate affordable to a broad range of highly qualified students. We face an increasingly difficult balance between our need to make the investments in our programs and infrastructure to remain competitive with our peer institutions, while simultaneously looking to increase aid to attract the mostly highly talented students. This is one of the reasons why building our endowment is so critical to our long-term success.

What was your biggest Colgate moment?
Probably the sit-in in 1968. I will never forget walking up the hill to the administration building as one of 36 African American students on campus following the demonstration in front of the Student Union. The experience showed me that a few dedicated people could use peaceful dissent to help change the world. Ironically, our motto today at ShoreBank is “Let’s Change the World.”

Who were your most influential professors?
Jerry Balmuth [philosophy] helped me develop my appreciation for rigorous analytical thought in a way that has served as a benchmark for me over the years. The dialogue Arnie Sio [sociology and anthropology] set up provided me a great opportunity to develop my own sense of values and priorities on the issues of race and class.

As a Colgate student, you brought some big acts to campus — which was the most interesting?
We brought Sly and the Family Stone, Chicago, and The Doors, but my senior year Kool and the Gang was one of the hottest acts in the country, and they were to be my last concert. They got lost on their way to campus and after sending out our opening act twice, I had to cancel the show and offer refunds. The group finally showed up at around 11:30 p.m. and played at the Coop for a few hundred dollars.

Alisandra Denton ’10

Major/Minor: Molecular Biology, Environmental Studies
Activities: Varsity track team, capoeira, Game’s Afoot
Hometown: Hood River, Oregon

How did you spend your summer?
I had an internship in Mainz, Germany, through the RISE Program, sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service. I’ve been taking German language classes and I learned about it from my professor, Claire Baldwin.
The research I worked on had to do with photovoltaics. I worked with plant pigments and proteins. My work included pipetting, centrifuging, measuring fluorescence, absorbance, and CD spectra, and often working in relatively dark conditions to protect said pigments. My favorite part was definitely the extraction of pigments from the plants.

How is Germany different from Colgate?
Well, a university education is free. Students’ ages ranged unpredictably. My work group regularly went to lunch together; hanging out with coworkers is common… And then there are the soccer games — crazy. Awesome. The mood of the country swings over the sake of a few goals. I’ve been very impressed by the European spirit.

What challenges did you face?
Getting through the first week, when everyone’s question to my attempts to speak German was, ‘do you speak English?’ Developing experiments by myself. Struggling to find ways to connect with German people that go deeper than cheering for their soccer team and working beside them. And if there is anything harder to understand than rapid-fire German, it’s rapid-fire German about the details of research.

What do you think you gained from this experience?
I learned about the science, improved my capoeira by joining the club at my host university, saw a different way to live, learned how to live on my own, learned what people think about America. Apparently, we are stereotyped for liking rap music and thinking soccer is lame. I burst my ‘American bubble.’

What is your pet peeve?
Bottled water

If you were a crayon, what color would you be?
Chlorophyll

What’s the first thing you notice about people?
What language they’re speaking! But at times when this is predictable, the way they carry themselves.

What one word best describes you?
Curious

Favorite website?
Newgrounds.com

If you could have a superpower, what would it be and why?
Reading minds . . . only to facilitate communication across language barriers, of course. Kidding: see ‘one word that best describes me.’

Christine Cronin Gallagher ’83

Alumni Council Nominations Committee chair
Career adviser, internship sponsor, Real World, Presidents’ Club Membership Committee, Maroon Citation
Managing Director, BMO Capital Markets, Healthcare Group

What do you find most satisfying about your work?
I love the combination of science and business. Drug companies looking to raise capital present their research and their business case, and I help the promising ones raise the money. I have to
understand the science enough to explain it to investors.

Why did you decide to serve on the Alumni Council?
When they asked me, my children were 1 and 3, so it was not an automatic decision, but I was honored. I’d first gotten involved with Colgate when I was working for Chase and volunteered with my colleague John Nozell [’81] to do recruiting on campus. I later joined the Presidents’ Club Membership Committee. My term was coming to an end, so it seemed like an obvious next step. I didn’t know how much fun it would be!

What issues are most important to you as a council member?
Colgate has a strong alumni network. We want to enhance that, while making better connections with current students. It’s all about communication. Also, the call to volunteer frequently goes out to the same set of people. I think there are more people who have the inclination, if they only knew what the opportunities were. Volunteering can be as simple as donating your airline miles, or having a student shadow you for a day.

How do you approach the process of selecting new members?
We encourage nominations, and we have tried hard to explain what we are looking for, which by definition needs to be broad enough that it’s inclusive. We look for people from diverse backgrounds who are demographically representative of the alumni body. Consistent financial support of Colgate is another element, but it’s relative to your means. Above all, we are looking for involvement with Colgate, because that’s the best proxy for demonstrating they are going to take the job seriously.

Tell us about your family
My husband, Con, works for a freight-forwarding and logistics firm. Kate is 7, active, athletic. Timothy is 5, and I found out two nights ago that he can read; he was keeping it secret!

You just got a free hour. How would you use it?
I might take one of the kids out solo, for what I call ‘alone time.’

Adrian Giurgea

(Photo by Andrew Daddio)

Director of the University Theater

Director, actor, dramaturgist since 1980; came to Colgate in 2005
PhD in theater, UCLA; BA, MFA, Academy of Theatre and Film, Bucharest, Romania; twice named a Fulbright Scholar
Has taught at the Academy of Theatre and Film (Romania), Ben Gurion University (Israel), Universita Sapienza (Italy), University of Utah, Hamilton College, University of California-LA and Berkeley, Pomona College, and California State University-Long Beach

On theater directing as his life’s work: When I was young, I dreamt about being a poet; some important literary magazines in my native Romania even published me. But when I was 15 or 16, I discovered theater. I went to the national conservatory, starting initially in dramaturgy and later on directing. I was running away from Soviet rule and from a professional destiny that forces you to work by yourself. The act of making something with other people is what inspires and excites me. It’s like building a church, or a house, or a palace and then stepping aside and saying, “This is what we did together.”
    As a director, your vision can be translated into something poetic. In a way, the creative act is the closest the male animal could come to giving birth. My profession is to be an interpreter of the text, to translate the text on stage, to give it life but not to take anything away from the truth created by the genius of the playwright.

On teaching theater: The Greek festivals that gave us the great tragedies and comedies were community events, opportunities to come together and explore politics, wars, famines, moments of elation or tragedy. Theater is done by communities for each other; therefore, it is given from generation to generation. Theater is also a craft, and not unlike people who teach each other to work in wood or stone or metal, it is imparted through the guild.
    It is your duty to share with the students everything that you have. I am not very different from a tailor. It doesn’t matter who comes to me. I need to respect the cutting and the measuring, but the fabric is my client’s fabric. If they bring cashmere, or a sack, I will still cut it to measure a suit. Sometimes the results are miraculous, and sometimes one changes a life. You see people blossoming.

What he came to do at Colgate, and how it’s going: One of the reasons I came, and why I was hired, was to make theater as relevant as any other discipline. Among peer colleges, Colgate was slow to offer a concentration in theater and has yet to consider dance as an academic discipline. The people who were here before me blazed a path that needed to be continued, and the transition to a competitive and up-to-date program in terms of faculty, facilities, and curriculum is what I’m in charge of achieving.
    In three years, we have done quite well. To grow the program, we put it upon ourselves
to teach a greater number of intro-level courses. We started doing an intro class as a first-year seminar, with wonderful results. It attracts better students, not those who think — wrongly — that theater is an easy, fun class. It is fun, but it is also enormously demanding. We now have more than 20 senior majors and minors.

Family: Our daughter Una is 10. My wife Simona — a wonderful teacher and actor and director — teaches here in the theater program. It is an opportunity for both of us to bring in the work that is the passion of our lives, theater.

Outside interests: The other day I overheard someone asking another person about their hobbies and I realized that what I do is so intense and time consuming and profound that every second of my life, I do one thing. Everything is, goes into, or is transformed into theater. Perhaps I’m one of the lucky.

Erik Ronning ’97

(Photo by Andrew Daddio)

John W. Beyer Head Men’s Soccer Coach

Hometown: Simsbury, Conn.
Colgate student years: History major, varsity soccer (defender), Sigma Chi, Career Center peer adviser
Honors: Howard N. Hartman Coach of the Year Award, 2008; named a top U.S. assistant coach by College Soccer News, 2002, 2004

Name a few key things that are important to you as a coach.
One part of my philosophy is that the players must be the owners of the team, not renters. To instill a sense of ownership, you must first identify the core of the team — the leaders who will serve as role models on the field and in the classroom for our younger players. They set their own goals and ambitions. Maybe it’s winning the Patriot League championship, or an NCAA tournament, or maybe beyond that. Then we identify how we are going to get there, develop a plan, and put it into action.
Being an alum, I can illustrate my passion for Colgate soccer, which partially provides the motivation my players need to succeed. They must understand that playing for the name on the front of their shirt is more important than the name on the back.

How did leaving your job as assistant coach at Colgate to coach at Northwestern University before returning to become head coach in 2005 impact you?
To be honest, I left kicking and screaming. I had an offer to be their assistant coach. I was leaning toward staying and was talking to Dick Biddle [Colgate’s football coach] about it at dinner at the Colgate Inn. Dick doesn’t say a whole lot, but finally he got fed up and said, “Erik, if you ever want to come back here, you’ve gotta leave.” That advice, from a person I respect tremendously, encouraged me to make that all-important move. I wouldn’t be here today if I hadn’t gone to Northwestern. I wouldn’t have been prepared enough.

Coming off a big year, and carrying a top 40 recruiting class, how high are your expectations for this season?
I will always set the bar higher each year. But I consider the season a series of seasons, and it is irresponsible to get ahead of yourself. From a player standpoint, we are as “soccer talented,” and as athletic, as we’ve ever been. We have the best team chemistry we’ve ever had. We certainly have the potential to contend for a Patriot League Championship again, and to compete in the NCAA tournament. A benefit is that we have been there before; however, now we have a target on our backs. We’re looking forward to the challenge.

Do you have any outside involvements?
I’m working on a master’s in athletic administration at SUNY Cortland. I also run summer soccer camps at Colgate and Northwestern, and I am co-director of the UCSB Elite camp in Pottstown, Pa.

Anything new and exciting in your life?
I’m getting married to Amber Plesniarski, who’s from Hamilton and a 2000 Binghamton graduate. Mayfred and Judy Plesniarski, who used to own John’s Shoe Shop in Hamilton, are her grandparents. The wedding is December 20, in Cooperstown, and the Colgate faculty band Dangerboy is going to play.

Do you have any hobbies?
I enjoy exercising and golfing. I like to grill. One special recipe is my super burger. I don’t want to divulge the secret. All I’ll say is, the cheese is on the inside.