Ithaca College

Dear, Campus Community:

The Strategic Plan Implementation Design Team is excited to announce that the window is now officially open for faculty, staff, and students to volunteer (or nominate someone great) to help launch the first-year implementation of our strategic plan, Ithaca Forever, by serving as a goal co-chair or a member of an objective-focused action group.

Below you’ll find a description of the role of a goal co-chair and brief summaries of the action groups that will be formed. As a reminder: not every year-one objective will be supported by an action group. Some objectives are already in progress or require specialized deep work from specific operational units. Further, some critical and ongoing work is not specifically listed among the formal strategic plan’s objectives, such as our task force focusing on integrative studies.

As with our planning process, the implementation of Ithaca Forever will prioritize inclusion and welcomes the participation of college community members from all backgrounds and from all areas of expertise. College leadership expects managers, directors, supervisors, and chairs to support staff and faculty who want to contribute to this work.

The success of Ithaca Forever and the forward motion of our college relies on all of us. The deadline to volunteer or nominate someone is one week from today: Monday, October 7.

Please note: an Ithaca Forever launch party has been planned for Wednesday, October 23. The event is for our entire IC family, and we will be asking our goal co-chairs and action group co-chairs and volunteers to participate in this event. Save the date!

Strategic Plan Goal Co-Chairs
Each of the nine strategic plan goals will have two co-chairs. These two co-chairs will be charged with driving the work associated with their goal, ensuring that projects and initiatives are kept on track. Because these co-chairs have a deep understanding of their goal-related work, they will also identify and operationalize collaborative opportunities among all goals and with different groups on campus.

Collectively, these 18 co-chairs will form the “implementation team” and will work closely with college leadership to ensure that the collective year-one strategic plan work advances as a whole.

A member of the college’s senior leadership team will serve as a liaison for each goal. Each goal’s co-chairs will be selected by the SLT liaison.

The estimated weekly time commitment for goal co-chairs is 2 - 4 hours.

Volunteer or nominate someone to co-chair one of our nine Ithaca Forever goals.

Get in on the “Action”
There are 27 year-one objectives that our community will be focusing on this academic year — 16 of them will require exceptional and focused collaborative effort across disciplines, departments, offices, and sectors. For these initiatives to be successfully implemented, we need members of our faculty, staff, and students to bring their energy and ideas to the table as part of an “action group.”

Below, you’ll find brief summaries of the 16 action groups we’re assembling to tackle the most wide-ranging of our year-one objectives. The action groups — just like our strategic plan’s nine goals — are sorted into four broad categories that reflect: Our Purpose, Our Commitments, Our Investments, and Our Future.

Action group members will be selected by the implementation design team in collaboration with the senior leadership team. The estimated weekly time commitment for action group members is 1 - 3 hours.

Each action group will have two co-chairs. You may volunteer specifically to be an action group co-chair. One co-chair will be selected from this pool of volunteers; one co-chair will be chosen by the members of the action group once the group is formed. The estimated weekly time commitment for action group co-chairs is 2 - 4 hours.

Volunteer or nominate someone for one of our 16 Ithaca Forever year-one action groups, either as a group member or a co-chair!

2019-20 Ithaca Forever Action Groups
Our Purpose
Open educational resources. Create a pilot program of open educational resources to reduce the cost of course materials for students.

Experiential learning. Expand and coordinate experiential learning opportunities and improve the student employment experience.

Student-ready campus. Assess current school- and college-wide advising and leadership opportunities, and implement components of our student success report.

See expanded descriptions of these action groups plus the additional year-one objectives associated with Our Purpose here.

Our Commitments
12-month campus. Develop and pilot programs for winter and summer academic terms and immersion experiences.

Common academic experience. Develop a common schedule and common academic regulations across all five schools to enhance student interdisciplinary opportunities.

IC incubator. Establish an LLC incubator that is available to the campus community to facilitate research, testing, and business development.

Off-campus learning. Enhance off-campus learning by increasing number and depth of opportunities, specifically by researching transportation options and developing partnership pathways.

Climate action. Create an interdisciplinary center for climate justice and enhance IC’s sustainability mindset around the climate crisis.

Campus climate. Revise college diversity statement and devise ways to continue and create programming that educates campus around DEI topics.

See expanded descriptions of these action groups plus the additional year-one objectives associated with Our Commitments here.

Our Investments
Academic program review. Develop criteria that will be used to review academic programs in order to identify areas for growth, consolidation, or reorganization.

Non-academic program review. Develop a process of assessment and review for non-academic units in order to identify areas for growth, consolidation, or reorganization.

Family care center. Envision, establish, and charge a committee to fact-find, benchmark, and present a recommendation for a family care center to the senior leadership team.

Invest in IC employees. Expand and promote wellness policies and programs for staff as well as flexible work options.

Research support. Devise and actualize a plan for annual grant writing workshops for faculty and staff.

Internal communications. Improve and innovate the ways in which faculty, staff, and students are connected by identifying issues and opportunities and developing a plan to address them.

See expanded descriptions of these action groups plus the additional year-one objectives associated with Our Investments here.

Our Future
Alumni expertise. Explore opportunities for alumni engagement in student recruitment and retention.

See an expanded description of this action group plus the additional year-one objectives associated with Our Future here.

As a college community, we have a lot of work ahead of us in the coming months that will have a profound effect on the future of this institution and the success of our students. Let’s get to work!

Sincerely,

The Strategic Plan Implementation Design Team

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

Hayley Harris
Vice President for Human and Organizational Development and Planning

Melissa Daly
Chief of Staff

Jason Freitag
Associate Professor, Department of History

Bill Guerrero
Vice President for Finance and Administration

Wendy Hankle
Senior Executive Communications Specialist

Bonnie Prunty
Dean of Students