Recaps: EdTech Innovation Hub, “How JP Conte’s $25 million gift anchored Colgate’s new West Campus”
A gift of $25 million can buy a lot of different things at a university. It can seed an endowed chair, fund scholarships for a generation, or put a name on a plaque in a quiet hallway. JP Conte chose to build a place where students gather.
That choice says more than the dollar figure does. It points straight back to what his own education gave him, and to the kind of student he keeps trying to reach.
The gift and where it sits
Conte’s money names the Social Center at the heart of Colgate’s new West Campus, the visible centerpiece of a $105 million alumni push. The building sits inside the university’s Campaign for the Third Century, which set a $1 billion goal back in 2022.
The design went to Robert A.M. Stern Architects, the firm behind Colgate’s Bernstein Hall, with Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates handling the grounds. Both studios already knew the campus, which is part of why the plan moved quickly.
Why student life over academics
Conte graduated from Colgate in 1985, the son of immigrants raised in modest circumstances first in Brooklyn and later in New Jersey. When he explains the gift, he keeps returning to belonging rather than buildings. “My Colgate experience helped me achieve my personal and professional dreams, as both a first-generation student and the son of immigrants, by providing me with an education that continues to serve me today,” Conte said.
A common space, unlike an endowed faculty line, belongs to every student who walks through it, and it happens to be where the friendships and contacts that outlast a degree take shape.
The company he keeps on the list
The names beside his own hint at the scale of the effort. The $105 million push carried the largest single gift in Colgate history, $50 million from Peter Kellner, plus three separate $10 million leadership gifts that pushed the West Campus plan over the line.
One of those gifts named Fox House at 70 Broad Street. Conte’s contribution anchored the centerpiece, the shared building where the rest of the plan hangs together rather than a single residence off to the side.
A consistent through-line
The building is of a piece with the rest of his giving. The Conte First Generation Fund carries the same priority across 11 universities, and his seats on the Colgate trustees, the UCSF Foundation, and the Hoover Institution give him a direct read on how campuses decide what to build.
Conte, founder and managing partner of Lupine Crest Capital, routes much of this work through the J-P Conte Family Foundation, established in 2017. Education runs alongside medical research and conservation as the causes he keeps coming back to.
