Ithaca College

Dear Ithaca College Community:

Imagining Ithaca—our blueprint and framework for an exceptional educational experience
We hope you saw Board of Trustees Chair Dave Lissy’s email on Monday, sharing the great news that the board unanimously approved our five-year strategic plan for the college.  This is a major milestone and a giant step towards realizing our vision to become a global destination for bold thinkers seeking to build thriving communities.

As co-chairs of Imagining Ithaca, we are excited the board firmly believes this is the right strategy—and at the right time—to accelerate moving the institution forward.  We are gratified that in adopting the plan the trustees have validated the hard work of hundreds of individuals, from all corners of the college as well as in the community, who contributed to building this visionary strategy.

The Imagining Ithaca strategic plan is a blueprint and framework for how we will provide an exceptional educational experience that is accessible, affordable, and responsive to the needs of the next generation of Ithaca College students.  Guided by this plan, our efforts will ensure the long-term vitality and sustainability of the institution.

We encourage you to please review the board-approved plan on the Imagining Ithaca website.

As you’ll see, this comprehensive plan presents a strategic framework comprising our vision, mission, and values.  There’s a description of the forces that guided our approach to this effort, the charge from President Collado, and an outline of the inclusive process that gave rise to our strategy.

The plan details our three themes, providing explanation for how we see these working together to shape our future.  We share our goals and objectives—the primary substance of the plan—including some of the initiatives we expect to be part of our efforts.  And, lastly, we look ahead to the ways we will implement this Imagining Ithaca plan and move toward a plan for Ithaca Forever, a phrase that captures the spirit of this next phase of our work.

Moving from ‘Imagining Ithaca’ to ‘Ithaca Forever’
As we set our sights on the implementation of this strategic plan, we now shift the orientation of this work. Over the summer, we will design the implementation process that will guide our execution of this strategic framework and will include the timeline, benchmarks, and responsible individuals going forward.

We will share a detailed implementation plan with the campus community following the fall 2019 board of trustees meeting in October, as we officially launch Ithaca Forever—making a powerful statement about our commitment to those whose futures we have been entrusted to help create: our students.  So, please stay turned for more exciting news.

In closing, we are so very grateful to the steering committee and working groups for all they’ve done to synthesize and organize a set of bold and exciting goals and objectives into a roadmap to lead the college forward.  As always, thank you for everything you are doing to imagine a brave and bright future for Ithaca College—forever!

Sincerely,

La Jerne Terry Cornish, Ph.D.
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs 

Jason Freitag, Ph.D.
Associate Professor, History

Imagining Ithaca Co-Chairs