Ithaca College

It is a great pleasure to announce to the Ithaca College community that last Friday, March 30th, the Academic Policies Committee (APC) unanimously approved Ithaca College’s first general education program, the Integrative Core Curriculum (ICC).  This vote was preceded by positive votes in all five of our schools and in the APC Curriculum Subcommittee.

While the new curriculum must still be approved by New York State, I feel confident in saying that in the fall of 2013 all Ithaca College undergraduate students will be participating in this exciting new program, the centerpiece of which is the 16 credit Themes and Perspectives component of the ICC.

The ICC is a critical IC 20/20 initiative, designed to not only help us achieve Middle States reaccreditation in 2018 (and a positive five year review in June of 2013), but to ensure that Ithaca College undergraduates are participating in an educational program designed to advance their learning in ways critical to their future personal and professional success.  In short, this is an incredibly important and exciting step for Ithaca College.

Faculty and staff across campus have worked hard to design and move forward the approval of the ICC. There are some whose work has been especially critical and who deserve special recognition for their role in this process. I want to take this opportunity to thank some of those groups and individuals.

First, all members of IC 20/20 Task Force One, but especially co-chairs Leslie Lewis and Bob Sullivan deserve special thanks for the incredible work they did all last year to create the initial skeleton for the ICC. Their work established the foundation for the continued development of the ICC this year under the leadership of the new Committee for College-Wide Requirements (CCR) that includes faculty representatives Mike Buck (HSHP), Luke Keller (H&S), Granger Macy (Business), James Pfrehm (H&S), Jack Powers (Communications), Jack Rossen (H&S), and John White (Music). The CCR has worked tirelessly since late October to engage appropriate groups and individuals on campus in developing the full ICC.  Finally, Danette Johnson, Director of the Core Curriculum, and Shaianne Osterreich, Associate Director of the Core Curriculum, deserve special recognition. The importance of their strong leadership and hard work cannot be overstated. Dr. Johnson’s work on the broader ICC and Dr. Osterreich’s work on the Ithaca Seminars (as one component of the ICC) has been superb. On behalf of Ithaca College, I extend my sincere appreciation to these groups and individuals for their roles in helping Ithaca College achieve the next level of excellence.

In addition, I want to recognize the faculty in all our schools for the program and school curricular work that has been done this year. Early in the fall semester I laid out a tentative but ambitious schedule designed to allow us to send forward to New York state this summer Ithaca College’s first college-wide general education program for the State’s review and, hopefully, approval.  I knew that schedule would be very hard to keep.  There certainly were times when I was uncertain as to whether or not it would be possible to achieve our goal in such a short time period.  It is a testament to the hard work of all our faculty, the school curriculum committees, and at the College level the CCR, and the APC, that we have been able to meet the goal.  Yes, there is a great deal of work still to be done.  Faculty, staff, and students, will all be critical to continued progress on the implementation of the ICC, and I am committed to supporting all these groups in appropriate ways as the initiative progresses.  But for today, let us all recognize the significant milestone that we have achieved.