Ithaca College

Dear Ithaca College Community:

Diverse Minds Are Gathering to Brainstorm
We’re up and running on the next phase of the planning process! More than 70 working group members have been oriented to their ambitious task at hand, and jumped into working with one another and with as many campus constituents as possible. Those teams are now meeting at least two hours a week, with most of them logging far more time than that.

•  See the working group members and co-chairs for each theme

Since our last community update, the steering committee and working groups have been facilitating a series of idea generation workshops over the past three weeks. We’d like to send a big “thank you” to all of you who participated in this series of conversations. As promised, the sessions were lively and free-flowing events—resulting in the generation of dozens of ideas to support our three interconnected strategic planning draft themes:

1. Interconnections Among Disciplines, Schools, Partners
2. Evolution of Students, Curriculum, College
3. Investment in People, Place, Planet

Approximately 75 people attended one of three open workshops, and dozens more participated in sessions held as part of regular meetings in the Office of Business and Finance, Office of Facilities, School of Music, and many other teams.

At each session, groups brainstormed as many goals and related objectives as they could for each theme, then narrowed their ideas down to their favored priority within each theme. All of the ideas were captured during the meetings. We are analyzing every one of them to look for common concepts—and finding quite a few, which we will share with you next week.

It’s not too late to participate! Your office, club, or department can host its own idea-generating workshop through April 5. Contact Jason Freitag to find out how to make that happen.

New For Your Feedback: Draft Values Statement
The steering committee has updated its draft values based on your feedback, and has added working definitions of what those commitments mean at Ithaca College. The revised values, which form the acronym  “ARISE,” are:

• Academic excellence
• Respect and accountability
• Innovation
• Sustainability
• Equity

We encourage you to visit the website to read the descriptions of these values and submit your feedback.

Up Next
A lot of overlapping activity will take place in the next few weeks. Here are some highlights:

• On March 26, all of the steering committee and working group members will gather for a two-hour plenary session to compare notes about the ideas that are emerging so far and identify next steps for engaging with the community about them.
• In the next two weeks, members of the steering committee and working groups will hold three idea-generation workshops in downtown Ithaca that include a wide range of local leaders and other stakeholders in the greater Ithaca community.
• Between now and the first week of April, steering committee members are scheduled to visit faculty meetings in each of the five schools to provide updates and workshop ideas.
• Remember, your office, club, or department can host its own idea-generating workshop through April 5. Contact Jason Freitag to learn more.

As always, please keep in mind that the Imagining Ithaca website offers a great overview and full explanation of the strategic planning process and how each element fits into the plan.

Finally, thank you once again for everything you are doing to help us together imagine a bold future for Ithaca College!

Sincerely,

La Jerne Terry Cornish
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Jason Freitag
Associate Professor, History

Imagining Ithaca Co-Chairs