Strategic Plan Update on Improving Space Utilization

11/14/19

Dear Campus Community,

One of the goals of the Ithaca Forever five-year strategic plan is to “advance the Campus Master Plan and improve space utilization to enhance the student experience and promote teaching and learning.”

A group of key campus partners has spent time over the past few months working to determine how best to accomplish that. The key overarching considerations were that space planning should be student centered and that it should address the need to enhance centralization of the School of Humanities and Sciences.

In keeping with those considerations, there are a series of office moves that will take place intended to accomplish those two objectives:

• In order to establish a vibrant student presence in the main administration building, certain important student services will be moved to the garden level of the Peggy Ryan Williams Center. Along with the existing offices for Student Financial Services and the Registrar on the PRW 2nd floor, this will help promote a “one-stop shopping” opportunity for our students, who must regularly interact with these operations.

• Administrative operations currently located on the 2nd and 3rd floors of Job Hall will be reassigned to other locations, being replaced by offices for faculty in the School of Humanities and Sciences that are currently scattered across the campus. Once these moves are implemented the vast majority of H&S offices will be located along the corridor from Dillingham Center to Muller Faculty Center, helping the school become a more cohesive and responsive unit, benefitting both faculty and the students they teach and advise.

The deans and vice presidents will be communicating specific office moves to their respective schools and divisions, but here are some of the primary relocations that will be taking place:

• Information Technology will vacate Job Hall’s 3rd floor, the East Tower 14th floor, and the Terrace 13 1st floor. Student-centered IT operations will remain in their current locations in Job Hall and Friends Hall, while others will move to Rothschild Place and the Warehouse.

• H&S faculty offices currently in Rothschild will move to Job Hall and Muller Faculty Center.

• Operations that will move to the garden level of the PRW Center include Student Accessibility Services, Academic Advising, Tutoring, Integrative Core Curriculum, ROTC, the Office of State Grants and the Office of International Programs and Extended Studies.

• The LGBT Center and BOLD Scholars Program will relocate to the Towers Concourse.

• The Office of Human Resources will have a continued but smaller presence in the PRW garden level, with most HR team members relocating to Terrace 13.

• The Honors Program and Center for Civic Engagement will move to Muller Faculty Center.

• Theatre Arts and the Office of Facilities will trade spaces in a portion of Dillingham Center’s lower level for a net gain of space for Theatre Arts.

• The ID Office will move to a space contiguous to IC Square in the Campus Center.

• The Tenure and Promotion space will move to Terrace 13.

• The Office of College Communications will move to the PRW 1st floor.

The majority of these moves will take place in the summer of 2020 in order to minimize disruption to staff, faculty, and students. Some office relocations will take place in the upcoming months as appropriate and necessary in order for the cascade of relocations to begin.

There will be minimal cost for all of these moves, as the vast majority involve no construction or renovations. We are using existing spaces in a more efficient and appropriate manner in accord with the primary objectives of the Ithaca Forever strategic plan.

Sincerely,

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

Hayley Harris
Vice President for Human Resources and Planning

0 Comments

https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20191114165330910