Justin Fedele and Golf Head Coach JP Kircher

Justin Fedele ’25 arrived at Colgate in the fall of 2021 as a promising golfer, looking to continue his success as a Raider while helping the program reach new heights. 

Now, after three seasons, he’s done just that. Colgate notched second place at the Patriot League Championship in consecutive years. Fedele has competed in major tournaments, earning several top-10 finishes. 

But golf was only one reason why the Montreal native chose Colgate. While eager to join a strong golf program, it was crucial to Fedele that he study at a college where the academics are exceptional. 

He made economics his major, but he was also curious about other subjects, which made a liberal arts institution like Colgate the perfect fit. 

With one year to go before graduation, Fedele has made the most of his college education.

“I’m trying to take advantage of Colgate’s liberal arts education because I have various interests, but I’m not quite sure what I want to do for a career, so I want to base myself in everything,” Fedele said.

Fedele has added minors in computer science and philosophy to his schedule. Studying two disparate minors  has made for a stimulating academic experience, Fedele says.

“Studying one particular subject could be quite monotonous for me,” he said. “Being able to have a wide range of classes really just peaks my interest as a student and makes me more excited to go to class. So, I’ve really enjoyed that part of the Colgate experience. I really do value it, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”

For Fedele, computer science has been a true test. Every course comes with a lab, requiring hours of work each week to solve complicated problems. 

Philosophy provides a stark change from computer science while opening new horizons for Fedele.

“Philosophy was a real shift for me in terms of subject and content. And I really enjoyed that switch, moving away from what I had been studying and opening up a new perspective,” he said.

After leaving home to study at the Phillips Exeter Academy, a boarding school in Exeter, N.H., Fedele started looking for colleges that offered D-I golf and a robust academic program.

Colgate, with a strong golf program, Seven Oaks Golf Course, and a national reputation for an excellent liberal arts education, became his top pick.

“One of the reasons why I came to Colgate was to take advantage of the smaller class sizes and really have a more personalized education,” he said. “I wasn’t interested in going to a big school because I want to have more of those face-to-face interactions.”

He selected economics as his major because of the broad exposure it would give him to the world of business and finance. As he continues to assess his career choices, business and finance have remained the focus of his education.

After his first year at Colgate, Fedele spent the summer interning at an artificial intelligence startup called BlueWave~ai. There, he worked with a small team on a data analysis project that required analyzing massive data sets from an offshore wind farm containing various weather-related information. 

The goal of the project was to identify any interesting trends for the company’s prediction models relating to electricity demand and price forecasting, which used similar weather information from nearby weather stations and were looking to improve model accuracy, he said.

The following summer, he worked as an operations coordinator for the private aviation firm Innotech-Execaire in Montreal. Fedele was tasked with creating and implementing a sales model with the goal of improving the charter department’s sales performance. 

Justin Fedele has helped the Raiders notch back-to-back second-place finishes in the PL Championship.

“I worked on constructing the model in Excel and coordinating meetings with different departments to gather necessary resources, data, and support for the model,” he said. “I learned many of the management and people skills required in the world of business during the experience and I had a great time doing it.”

This summer, he has another internship lined up, this time at the boutique consulting firm Marketbridge in Washington, D.C., where Fedele will work within their data analytics and strategy groups.

“I am excited to experience the nation’s capital and continue building my skillset before I graduate,” he said.

Juggling a major, two minors, and golf have left Fedele with little time. But he’s still found ways to enrich his Colgate experience in other ways. Fedele plays for the campus club hockey team, which won the league championship this year. He’s also a member of Beta Theta Pi fraternity, and served as its president this past spring. 

On the golf course, Fedele said his experience with the Raiders has been fantastic. He competed in 10 tournaments in 2023-24, and helped Colgate win the Bucknell Invitational with a 17th-place finish out of 108 golfers.

He captured eighth-placed finishes at the Cornell Invitational and Columbia Autumn Invitational. 

In addition, Fedele said he’s enjoyed competing against golfers from top programs around the country. It’s an experience that has made him a better golfer.

“It’s good to be exposed to that level of competition,” he said. “I believe it has brought a lot of good out of my game and the team’s game in general.”

Fedele looks forward to the 2024-25 golf season and helping the Raiders build on their success. He’s also excited about completing his Colgate education. While he doesn’t know what the future holds for him, he said his academic experience is putting him in the best position to tackle the real world.

“I know that whatever I pursue, I’m going to have the work ethic and determination to do well in it,” he said. “I know I have the ability to do whatever I want. I think the Colgate experience has really helped me to realize that. I’m going to take the qualities I learned here and go with the flow.”