Alumni center opens

Welcome: George and Ruth Stevens Colton ’35 at the new center

Skidmore’s new Colton Alumni Welcome Center is open for business. Just opposite the main campus entrance and next to the Surrey Williamson Inn on North Broadway, the center offers maps and information, a sampling of items available at the Skidmore Shop, free coffee, a computer workstation, and other amenities. Housing the offices of alumni affairs and college events, it’s open five days a week and on major college weekends.
     According to Mike Sposili, director of alumni affairs and college events, the opening of the center realizes a long-held dream of the alumni board. Beverly Harrison Miller ’67, alumni board president, says, “For four years, Skidmore was our whole world—it was where we grew up. We wanted to make sure that when alumni came back to campus, someone would welcome them and help them feel a part of the college again.”
     Along with refreshments and campus information, Colton offers a library of Skidmore yearbooks from 1914 to the present, old student directories, and recently published books by faculty. The facility, says Miller, “is terrific—it’s beyond my wildest dreams.”

Colton Alumni Welcome Center

     When the college first acquired the building for office space in 1994, it named it Colton House in honor of George Colton, a longtime Skidmore trustee and husband of Ruth Stevens Colton ’35. In February the Coltons joined a crowd of alumni, trustees, faculty, and staff in formally rededicating the building as an alumni center.
     Alumni returning for Reunion in May will be among the first to make use of the new welcome center. —SR