Instagram / @amscolgate

Blending financial support with meaningful mentorship and community-building experiences, the Alumni Memorial Scholars (AMS) program at Colgate University has produced countless innovative projects, allowing scholars to further investigate their interests while also building a tight-knit community. 

The AMS Program was first established to honor Colgate alumni who sacrificed their lives during World War I and World War II. Students are selected to be an Alumni Memorial Scholar at the time of their admission, with around 15 students making up the program per year. A hallmark of the AMS program is that students receive grant funding totaling up to $10,000 to help fund independent research proposals, conferences, internships or other academic pursuits. 

Professor Anne Perring, the faculty director of AMS, explained that AMS does not pertain to one discipline, with projects reflecting a wide range of fields and interests. 

“[Projects] span the gamut … it enables students to maintain a side of their interests that are maybe not the main academic focus anymore. Once you have to narrow down in college, there’s a sense of loss of the things that you used to do as hobbies that you don’t have time for anymore. So sometimes the projects are just feeding that continued [passion],” Perring said. 

Moreover, Perring noted that academic opportunities provided by AMS may help students further discover and affirm their interests and paths for the future. 

“I hope that students feel like it’s a good springboard to whatever they’re hoping to do next, or if they don’t know what they were hoping to do next, that it helps them narrow it down so that they feel more enabled to choose the right thing when they get out,” Perring said. “I think it’s probably great for building confidence and just having ideas and trying to implement them.” 

Crouch echoed Perring’s sentiment, explaining that AMS enables students to develop research and experiences that are uniquely their own. 

“I hope students look back and it’s really a highlight of their time at Colgate, that they had this incredible opportunity to be able to be offered grants to really create something that they have ownership over,” Crouch said.

For senior Hannah Richards, an AMS scholar and intern, her interest in American Sign Language blossomed into an independent research project comparing assimilation between deaf communities in the United States and Germany. The project spanned two summers, with Richards spending the first summer in Berlin and the second in Munich and Hamburg. 

“It was incredible. I had never been outside of the country until coming to Colgate,” Richards said. “It was a really rewarding experience, and it definitely helped me grow and be more comfortable being abroad in the future.” 

Another touchstone of the program is a pre-orientation experience that helps bond members and build community, which had a profound effect upon senior Corrigan Peters. While he did not know it at the time, it was during pre-orientation that Peters would meet three friends that he would come to live with as a senior. As an AMS intern, Peters has had the opportunity to give back and help lead pre-orientation for the next class of students for the past three years. 

“Leading pre-orientation was memorable,” Peters said. “I think being in that role really helped me transition into being an upperclassman.” 

While AMS may be thought of as having an academic focus, sophomore Carmen Reed emphasized its social impact in bringing together like-minded students.

“It’s really the community aspect that’s so important to me. These are a bunch of people [and] we’re all from these different places – we’re all different people who have so many different majors, so many different interests, different backgrounds. And yet, somehow Colgate got us all together where we’re fairly similar people and we get along really, really well,” Reed said.

In a recent development, AMS students now also share the same first-year seminar course (FSEM) and live in the same commons helping to further build their tight knit community. Another new change includes lateral admission, where current first-years join the existing class of scholars for the upcoming year.  

Another recent innovation is a symposium held in the spring alongside other scholar programs. Colgate Scholar Programs Coordinator Chelly Crouch helped develop this event which gives AMS students the opportunity to share their research along groups like the Benton and Lampert scholars. 

Richards explained that AMS also helps students gain advantageous experiences for beyond college.   

“The friendships are definitely long-lasting and academically — being able to conduct independent research that was fully funded was incredible. It’s definitely been leveraged in my interviews for law schools,” Richards said. 

The program’s impact, both academic and social, is apparent in the curiosity and community it fosters for scholars. 

“[AMS] made me more open to exploring new things,” Peters said. “I looked into more things because I knew that I had that opportunity if I found something, and so I think it definitely enriched my experience intellectually as well as socially.”