Ithaca College Middle States Reaccreditation Self-Study · 2007-10-01 · Committee selects annual...

Ithaca College

Middle States Reaccreditation

Self-Study

Public Draft

October 1, 2007

Table of Contents

Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................1

Institutional Overview..................................................................................................................................1

Structure of the Self-Study...........................................................................................................................2

Chapter 1: Mission and Planning ...............................................................................................................6

The Ithaca College Institutional Plan .........................................................................................................6

Culture of Planning.....................................................................................................................................14

Culture of Planning at Work: Sustainability ............................................................................................19

Chapter 2: Leadership..................................................................................................................................20

Governance and Administration...............................................................................................................20

Ethics and Integrity.....................................................................................................................................29

Chapter 3: Admission and Retention ......................................................................................................31

Admissions—from Inquiry to Matriculation ..........................................................................................31

Retention—Student Support Services......................................................................................................35

Chapter 4: Faculty and Staff Focus ..........................................................................................................42

Introduction: Emphasis on Quality of Work Life..................................................................................42

Faculty Roles and Qualifications...............................................................................................................43

Employee Development.............................................................................................................................46

Staffing Needs..............................................................................................................................................50

Human Resource Policies and Practices ..................................................................................................53

Chapter 5: Student Learning......................................................................................................................56

Educational Offerings.................................................................................................................................56

Academic Affairs/Student Affairs Collaboration...................................................................................65

Chapter 6: Assessment.................................................................................................................................68

Institutional Assessment Processes ..........................................................................................................68

Assessment of Student Learning...............................................................................................................72

Measuring Student Success ........................................................................................................................76

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................................80

Recommendations.......................................................................................................................................80

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Introduction Our vision: Ithaca College strives to become the standard of excellence for residential comprehensive colleges, fostering intellect, creativity, and character in an active student-centered learning community.

Institutional Overview

Ithaca College is a private, coeducational, residential college with an enrollment of approximately 6,100 undergraduate and 500 graduate students. Some 40 states and 70 countries are represented in the student population. Its 12:1 student-faculty ratio allows a substantial degree of individual attention, yet the College provides a diversity of educational opportunities generally only found at large universities. The five schools—Business, Communications, Health Sciences and Human Performance, Humanities and Sciences, and Music—along with the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies and Division of Graduate Studies, offer more than 100 degree programs, from biochemistry to business administration, journalism to jazz, philosophy to physical therapy.

From its founding in 1892 as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music, Ithaca has had a distinctive and distinguished history of interweaving the threads of liberal and professional education. All degree programs are supplemented by independent and interdisciplinary studies, dual majors, minors, and elective courses in other academic fields. An Ithaca education emphasizes active learning, collaborative student/faculty research, and development of the whole student.

Ithaca’s modern campus is the result of a transformation begun in 1960 when the College moved from the Victorian buildings scattered throughout the downtown area to a hill south of the city. The College’s present 700-acre site commands a view of Cayuga Lake and the City of Ithaca, a cosmopolitan community with a population of 30,000. The campus continues to evolve to provide students with state-of-the-art facilities to complement the comprehensive array of academic programs. Slated for opening in the fall of 2007 is a new home for the School of Business, which is designed to meet the highest level of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. The facility is intended to be a teaching tool in the fullest sense of sustainability, so that it will model economic, environmental, social, ethical, and human performance. The College is also in the final stages of planning for a new athletics and events center, intended to house not only sporting contest, but also a wide variety of activities ranging from concerts to conferences to commencement ceremonies.

Past presidents of Ithaca College helped to build the foundations of the College by moving it to its present site and building its physical plant to accommodate the academic programs of the time. In the last ten years President Peggy R. Williams has built upon that foundation to create a sense of community for the College both in programs that help secure an Ithaca College identity for all students and in a commitment to sustainability throughout the College, including in our academic, human resource, and physical plant operations. Ithaca College has undergone significant changes since our last Middle States review, as demonstrated by the creation of new vision and mission statements and the adoption of seven new initiatives that will direct its continued development as a comprehensive college:

1. We have been engaged in a planning process, specifically the adoption of an institutional plan that includes a master plan to allow for facilities planning and renewal.

2 Introduction

Ithaca College Reaccreditation Self-Study—Public Draft

2. We have engaged in a comprehensive campaign that will help to create a culture of philanthropy both externally and internally.

3. We have embraced the concept of diversity in all aspects of the College and have created initiatives to manifest this value on our campus.

4. We are creating new communities of learning and learners to provide shared educational experiences for all students that reflect the College’s educational values and goals.

5. We have instituted new programs and assessments to improve the quality of scholarly and pedagogical life.

6. We are engaged in a new vision that links fiscal planning to enrollment stability, identifying and planning for the optimum sustainable enrollment while improving the quality of the student body profile.

7. We have embraced the value of sustainability in all our operations.

These seven initiatives will be discussed in detail in the chapters of our self-study.

Structure of the Self-Study

The self-study is organized into six chapters that relate directly to combinations of the Middle States standards:

Chapter 1—Mission and Planning (Middle States Standards 1, 2, and 3)

Chapter 2—Leadership and Governance (Middle States Standards 4, 5, and 6)

Chapter 3—Admission and Retention (Middle States Standards 8 and 9)

Chapter 4—Faculty and Staff Focus (Middle States Standards 3 and 10)

Chapter 5—Student Learning (Middle States Standards 11, 12, and 13)

Chapter 6—Assessment (Middle States Standards 7 and 14)

While we have addressed Middle States Standard 6 Integrity in Chapter 2, we also discuss it in other chapters as appropriate. The following narrative provides brief outlines of the primary activities described in the six chapters.

Mission and Planning

Ithaca College has experienced great changes in the last ten years, many of which can be attributed to the adoption of our Institutional Plan. In 1998 President Williams appointed the Planning and Priorities Committee composed of staff, faculty, and students, and charged it with the development of a College-wide institutional plan that would provide vision, direction, and institutional renewal. The plan articulated essential priorities, goals, implementation strategies, and key performance indicators, as well as new mission and vision statements, and reflected broad-based and active participation by all segments of the campus community. The College’s vision and mission statements articulate a clear set of values for the community.

The first draft of the plan was completed in January of 2000 and presented to the Ithaca College Board of Trustees, which formally adopted it in spring of 2001 with updates in 2002, 2004, and

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2006. These reports provide a cumulative summary of the collective accomplishments in implementing the priorities and goals of the Plan. The Institutional Plan is a touchstone throughout the College’s annual budget allocation process, and “planning and priorities” is a unique budget line that receives significant funding each year. In conjunction with the President’s Council, the Committee selects annual Areas of Focus from the Plan—for example, continuing to improve the quality of the student experience (in academic and co-curricular arenas) and developing student enrollment and retention strategies for 2009 and beyond, given regional demographic projections. The Institutional Plan is divided into nine separate priorities, all of which are addressed through the annual budget process. While the committee’s priorities drive budgetary priorities—and we measure our progress through our key performance indicators—in addition, $250,000-300,000 annually is also set aside for new initiatives that may arise from the planning process.

The Institutional Plan has also set as a goal the success of Ithaca College’s most ambitious financial program to date—the 115 million dollar, first-ever comprehensive campaign. With $108.7 million garnered so far, in this the sixth and last year of the campaign, we are optimistic that we will be successful. The campaign is designed to fund the following: Academic Program Enhancements including the Ithaca Seminars, honors programs, mentored research internships and fieldwork opportunities as well as faculty research and conference travel; new and existing scholarships; new student living spaces including the Circle Apartments; the School of Business building; an Athletics and Events Center; and the Ithaca Fund, annual giving by alumni and others to fund visiting scholars and artists, technology, faculty/student research, financial aid, and the library. The entire campus community has been engaged in this initiative: Faculty and staff involvement in the campaign occurs through the Faculty/Staff Campaign Committee; in 2006, through over a dozen presentations to various student groups and from recommendations from the deans, the Office of Development recruited 250-300 students as “campaign ambassadors.” The development office then trains and educates these students, faculty, and staff in philanthropy with the expectation of inviting them to volunteer in this important College initiative.

Leadership and Governance

Under the leadership of President Williams and other senior officers, deans, directors, and managers, the College has implemented new initiatives based on the vision and mission articulated in the Institutional Plan. The leadership style of President Williams, who assumed her duties since the last Middle States report was prepared, is inclusive, collaborative, and participatory with a focus on building community. Indeed, the Planning and Priorities Committee initially identified “community” as one of its key priorities, but then determined that it should be included in all the nine priorities rather than being seen as a separate tenth one. As such, the goal of community has become infused in much of how Ithaca College operates. We have faculty, staff, and student members of the Board of Trustees (with full voting privileges), two faculty serve on the College Budget Committee, and the president meets regularly with the chairs of both Faculty and Staff Councils to ensure that communication is continual and substantive.

In 1999 the Board of Trustees, with the participation of faculty, staff, and students, produced a new Faculty Handbook and Ithaca College Policy Manual, which articulates the governance and committee structure. The College also maintains Faculty and Staff Councils and the Student Government Association. The level of campus involvement by all constituencies in Ithaca College governance has both broadened and deepened in the last ten years. Robust participation in Student Government Association, Faculty Council, Staff Council and various school governance committees

4 Introduction


all testify to the contributions faculty, staff, and students make to the decision-making processes at Ithaca College.

The College has expanded its leadership in the area of graduate studies. A few years ago the associate provost’s duties included a role as dean of graduate studies, but now the dean of graduate studies is a separate full-time position that oversees all graduate programs, including the new master’s in teaching and doctorate in physical therapy.

The Ithaca College Board of Trustees has expanded its membership from 28 to 35 members to provide greater flexibility. In 1997 the Board conducted a comprehensive self-assessment which led to a series of revisions of policies and processes; in 2005-2006 the Board completed a second self-assessment and will engage a consultant to work with the Board in developing an action plan based on this more recent assessment. The Board also conducted a comprehensive review of the governance system at the College, which resulted in a number of changes, including revision of the Faculty Handbook, the recommendation to create governance bodies at the levels of the schools, and the creation and posting on the web of the Ithaca College Policy Manual.

Admission and Retention

The College is committed to recruiting, admitting, and retaining a student body that demonstrates excellence in all programs while ensuring its continued fiscal stability. In order to accomplish this, it has developed strategic processes that link fiscal planning, enrollment stability, and initiatives to improve the quality profile of our student body. The current Institutional Plan articulates an enrollment goal to “modestly increase student body size in targeted cost effective programs.” Evidence of the College’s commitment to student success is a variety of programs, policies, and procedures that provide service to students from the time they are first identified as prospective students until after they graduate. Student support services such as academic advising and academic enrichment services join with exit interviews and alumni surveys to promote student success. Our efforts in academic programs—the expansion of the Ithaca first-year seminar, AACSB accreditation, the definition of shared academic experiences for Ithaca College students, the First-year Reading Initiative, the expansion of living/learning opportunities off-site, and more focused attention on experiential learning opportunities—are important to improve the quality of the IC student experience. Recently, an Enrollment Task Force was created with the charge to be proactive for the expected demographic downturn in 2010, which will affect numbers of applications and enrollment. With the implementation of the new student information system, the revision of student self-service opportunities, and the focus on academic quality, the College is taking a proactive approach and dedicating resources to be a leader in the market.

Faculty/Staff Focus

One of the nine priorities in the Institutional Plan is to ensure that “Ithaca College is seen as a ‘first choice’ employer.” Since this priority was applied by the Planning and Priorities Committee to faculty and staff, this chapter addresses both. The College has applied the value of sustainability to all its areas, including human resources, the single most valuable resource at the College. Many of the initiatives adopted reflect that value, especially efforts in the area of faculty workload, employee development, and sustaining an environment of openness and communication. For faculty, a significant new program in support of this priority has been the Faculty Workload Project, which provided an opportunity for the College to address the faculty’s heavy teaching load. Significant quality of work life initiatives for staff include a comprehensive review, redesign, and adoption of a new College compensation program for all staff, which will allow greater possibilities for career

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progression than were possible under the old system, and the launch of the Ithaca College LeaderShip Program in 2002. Since the inception of the latter, 200 College employees have enhanced their management and leadership skills. Faculty roles and qualifications were clarified in the new Faculty Handbook, which included the Boyer model of scholarship that emphasizes the scholarship of teaching.

Student Learning

The vision and mission statements provide the bedrock upon which our academic programs stand. Ithaca College is a residential, comprehensive college committed to “fostering intellect, creativity, and character” in an “active, student-centered learning community.” Our comprehensive structure supports professional programs as well as those in the liberal arts and sciences. The College has developed new student-learning initiatives based on the Institutional Plan, one of the most important being the development of “shared” experiences for Ithaca College students, including the following: a new student orientation program, the Ithaca Seminar, the IC residential seminar, capstone experiences, and the opportunity to create a learning portfolio. These and other shared experiences have come to be known as the “Ithaca Experience,” and were developed in part to support core attributes to be developed in all IC students: lifelong learning, disciplinary competence, communication skills, critical thinking, aesthetic appreciation, personal development and social/environmental responsibility. Other learning initiatives called for in the Institutional Plan include strengthening interdisciplinary programs and developing new graduate programs that follow from our mission such as programs in education, business, communications, health sciences, sport sciences, and music.

Assessment

Ithaca College is committed to creating a culture of assessment in all areas of its operations. Some campus units use external standards as benchmarks for periodic assessment while others use assessment measures developed within departments to determine instructional effectiveness. The Institutional Plan is the vehicle for assessment at the institutional level. Benchmarks for success include reports related to areas of focus identified by the Planning and Priorities Committee that provide a cumulative summary of our collective accomplishments, reports of annual goals and objectives set by vice presidents, and program review and assessment of academic departments called for in the Plan and instituted in academic year 2001-2002. These reviews are completed to ensure that its academic programs and individual courses meet the expected standards for its degree and certificate programs. By focusing on program strengths and weaknesses through the use of both internal study and external review teams, departments can enhance quality and/or address problems. Information gathered through assessment has been used for planning the future direction of academic departments and programs.

Academic program review examines student learning objectives and methods for achieving those objectives, including curricula, syllabi, and examinations. In addition, alumni are surveyed and external examiners are called in to assess the department. Often, comparable and aspirant departments at other institutions are surveyed. The “action plan” portion of the process ensures feedback into the operation of the department. The process is continuous in that updates are required annually. In addition, the full planning and assessment process is to be conducted every five years. The College has also initiated program review in the Office of Student Affairs, particularly in the offices of Residential Life, Intercollegiate Athletics, Dining Services, and Multicultural Affairs.

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Chapter 1: Mission and Planning

The comprehensive mission and vision statements of Ithaca College inform its planning processes and drive the development and allocation of institutional resources and activities.

Chapter One addresses Middle States standards 1 (Mission, Goals, and Objectives), 2 (Planning, Resource Allocation, and Institutional Renewal), and 3 (Institutional Resources). In this chapter we discuss the College’s mission, goals, and objectives, describe the College’s planning activities— including the nine priorities in the Institutional Plan—and their outcomes leading to institutional renewal, and demonstrate that the College has the needed human, financial, technical, and physical resources to achieve its goals. Since the Planning and Priorities Committee chose to address Quality of Work Life for both faculty and staff in the same priority, we will address detailed human resource issues for both faculty and staff in Chapter Four. We end this chapter with a discussion of sustainability, which has become a core value for Ithaca College and a manifestation of a culture of planning.

The Ithaca College Institutional Plan

The Ithaca College Institutional Plan Process

In 2001 Ithaca College adopted an institutional plan—including vision and mission statements—that has been the guiding document driving decisions regarding planning and resource allocation in all areas of the College.1 This plan was created by a College-wide Planning and Priorities Committee, appointed by President Williams in December 1998 and charged with the production of a College-wide institutional plan that would 1) articulate the College’s essential priorities, goals, implementation strategies, and key performance indicators, and 2) reflect broad-based and active participation by all segments of the campus community. Three months later the College held its first campus-wide roundtable discussions; more than 400 people participated. Nearly a year of such discussions followed, and several task forces to address particular priorities originated from the discussions.

From this base, the Institutional Plan was developed by the all-College Planning and Priorities Committee (PPC), a representative committee of faculty, staff, students, and administrators, It has been our practice and policy to be as inclusive as possible in the establishment of membership on committees, and this is reflected in the composition of this new committee. It was originally staffed from a list of campus community members who volunteered to serve as a result of a campus invitation from President Williams. The next step was to develop mission, vision, and goals through various roundtable discussions with members of the College community. From that input, a task group of the committee drafted mission and vision statements. A few key assumptions guided the work of the PPC including the following: fiscal stability and stewardship; the emphasis on undergraduate residential education, including the fostering of intellect and character; an awareness of the changing world of higher education; a focus on modest growth, including the development of new graduate programs; and the emphasis on fostering a sense of community on campus.

1 The Institutional Plan is available online on the Ithaca College website, and is included as an appendix to this self-study.

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The first draft of the plan was completed in January 2000 and presented to the Ithaca College Board of Trustees. The College adopted the plan in the spring of 2001, and it has remained a dynamic and critically important touchstone for the College’s continued growth and development.

The Ithaca College Mission Statement

The Ithaca College mission statement has become the bedrock upon which all our programs rest—so much so that we reproduce it here in full:

To provide a foundation for a lifetime of learning, Ithaca College is dedicated to fostering intellectual growth, aesthetic appreciation, and character development in our students. The Ithaca College community thrives on the principles that knowledge is acquired through discipline, competence is established when knowledge is tempered by experience, and character is developed when competence is exercised for the benefit of others.

A comprehensive college that since its founding has recognized the value of combining theory and performance, Ithaca provides a rigorous education blending liberal arts and professional programs of study. Our teaching and scholarship are motivated by the need to be informed by, and to contribute to, the world’s scientific and humanistic enterprises. Learning at Ithaca extends beyond the classroom to encompass a broad range of residential, professional, and extracurricular opportunities. Our undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, and alumni all contribute to the learning process.

Ithaca College is committed to attracting a diverse body of students, faculty, and staff. All members of the College community are encouraged to achieve excellence in their chosen fields and to share the responsibilities of citizenship and service in the global community.

As articulated here, the values of life-long learning, intellectual growth, and community engagement drive our policy and program decisions, and the language of the statement has become imbedded in our culture. This can be partly attributed to the fact that it is communicated to both internal and external constituents in the following ways: to faculty and staff via the Ithaca College Institutional Plan (printed and available in hard copy in 2001, now available online); the Ithaca College Policy Manual; in admissions materials sent to all prospective students; and the Undergraduate Catalog.2

Ithaca College Institutional Priorities

The College’s institutional goals are aligned with its mission statement and are evidenced in the nine priorities specified in the institutional plan: academic program development, diversity, enrollment, experiential and performance-based learning, facilities, quality of student life, quality of work life, resource development, and technology. Within each of these priorities, the College has identified goals and implementation strategies that lead to substantive campus change.

2 The Ithaca College Policy Manual is available online to internal audiences on the Ithaca College website. The tables of contents for each volume are included as an appendix to this self-study. The Undergraduate Catalog is available at http://www.ithaca.edu/catalogs/.

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Academic Program Development: “Strengthen the College’s academic offerings, including interdisciplinary programs, shared academic experiences, and graduate programs.”

The Institutional Plan includes six goals for this priority: create opportunities for shared academic experiences for Ithaca College undergraduates, explore the creation and implementation of core coures, investigate the possibility of a College-wide honors program, strengthen and expand graduate study, establish an administrative entity to allow for the development of interdisciplinary programs, and establish regular program review for all academic programs. In the pursuance of these goals, the College has created a new administrative entity, the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, to provide opportunities for interdisciplinary study at Ithaca College. It also created the Core Experience Task Force, which was charged with developing a framework for shared educational experiences for our students.3 The College also developed the Masters in Teaching, the doctorate in physical therapy, and other expansion of graduate programs as well as online learning as a response to the increased focus on graduate programs.

Diversity: “Enhance the diversity of students, faculty, and staff and create a supportive environment and programs for the entire College community.”

The College’s Institutional Plan includes four goals to address diversity issues: 1) increase the diversity of the Ithaca College population; 2) retain faculty, staff, and students from underrepresented groups; 3) create a campus environment that accepts, reflects, and celebrates diversity; and 4) collaborate with off-campus communities, from nearby metropolitan areas to sites abroad, to advance diversity. In 2004 President Williams convened the Presidential Task Force on Diversity, charged to review the Ithaca College Institutional Plan and make recommendations to assure consistent progress toward the College’s diversity goals.4 The President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity was formed next to evaluate and implement recommendations of the Presidential Task Force on Diversity. Goals called for “increasing,” “retaining,” creating,” and “collaborating,” with some of the goals being more easily measured than others. For example, in regard to increasing student diversity, data reported here show an increase in students classified as minority from 4.2% in 1990 to 10% in 2006—over a 100% increase. A number of programs have helped with diversity goals: the Ithaca Achievement Program, a community of learners dedicated to personal and academic success, the College’s sponsorship of the New York State Higher Education Opportunity Program and the Creation of the Center for Culture, Race, and Ethnicity. In the fall 2001, the College underwent a comprehensive review of its search and selection procedures and implemented programs such as the “Ithaca Initiative” to enhance the retention of newly hired African-American, Latino, Asion, and Native American (ALANA) faculty and staff members. The College now has two newly tenured African-American faculty members and has seen an 84% increase in faculty and staff of color since the early 1990s. Additionally, since 1997, the Board of Trustees has made efforts to increase its diversity, including selection of three people of color and an increased number of women on the Board.

3 See http://www.ithaca.edu/provost/docs/coreexperience/CETFfinalreport/ for this task force’s final report; its work will be discussed further in this chapter, and in Chapters 5 and 6, below.

4 See http://www.ithaca.edu/president/Final_Diversity_Report_May05.pdf for this task force’s final report.


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Another goal calls for collaboration with off-campus communities to advance diversity. A number of activities indicate that faculty, staff, and students at the College are involved in such collaborations and that these collaborations are well received. For example, the College established a fruitful partnership with the Frederick Douglass Academy (FDA) in New York City in 1998. FDA is a public middle/high school in Harlem that enrolls nearly one thousand students. Our student teachers learn important pedagogical principles through their work there. Ithaca College faculty and teacher education students have held workshops at FDA that target specific academic needs of FDA students; Ithaca College has assisted FDA in the development of its televisions studio, student newspaper, and computer laboratory; in addition, Ithaca College has made scholarships available to FDA students to attend our Summer Program for High School Students. Another example of an educational partnership is the Invisible History Project to create a film about the Southside Community Center in Ithaca. The final goal calls for creating a campus environment that accepts, reflects, and celebrates diversity. The College certainly has taken steps not only to do this but also to determine if it is being successful. Although the 2004 Campus Climate Survey clearly indicates that work remains to be done in creating an overall campus environment that is seen as welcoming to a diverse student body, our diversity efforts have begun to create an environment where diversity issues are central to our collective conversations. In spite of these efforts, improving retention remains a significant challenge, particularly among faculty of color.

Enrollment: “Optimize enrollment in all programs while continuing to build a strong academic profile.”

The Plan calls for the following goals in the furtherance of this priority: increase modestly student-body size in cost-effective programs and review enrollment in less cost-effective ones; strengthen the academic profile of the student body; strengthen current recruitment efforts through greater faculty involvement; increase the College-wide retention rate; increase the diversity of the student body; establish first-rate web pages for all facets of the College community. The College has made progress in virtually all of these areas. AACSB accreditation and the promise of its new building have helped to increase enrollments in the School of Business, and Humanities and Sciences has both maximized its existing programs and created new ones that are in high demand, for example the new writing major instituted in 2000, which now has approximately 160 majors. Faculty have participated in recruitment efforts in many ways, including offering seminars for prospective students and their parents and meeting with individual prospective students. During the past ten years the quality profile of the College applicant pool has increased substantially. (Please see Chapter Three for average SAT scores and high school rankings of matriculating freshman). In addition, over the last ten years the numbers of students coming from underrepresented racial and ethnic populations has increased from 415 to 643 (an increase of 10%). In addition, the College has hired computer personnel to assist departments and faculty in the creation of new web pages.

Graduate enrollment has also increased given targeted efforts. Graduate enrollment in fall 2007 will total approximately 500 students, by far the largest cohort in the history of the College, and double the enrollment averages of the decade between 1992 and 2002. This growth solidifies the purpose and strength of the division, while fully supporting the College’s classification as a master’s one institution. The graduate division is now approximately equal in size to other schools at the College.

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Experiential and Performance-based Learning: “Develop curricular and cocurricular programs that encourage or incorporate field-based, experiential, and performance-based learning; collaborative research; and partnerships with educational, professional, and service organization.”

The goals for this priority are to promote student engagement in and out of the classroom and promote service and community involvement; promote performance-based and experiential opportunities; coordinate the organization, communication, and distribution of information about these opportunities throughout the community; and establish additional opportunities for experiential learning in the United States and abroad. Within the School of Humanities and Sciences a committee has been formed both to communicate to faculty the experiential learning opportunities available through the existing curriculum and to assist and encourage faculty to incorporate experiential learning in their classes. As this committee has demonstrated, many faculty integrate classroom learning with fieldwork. Experiential and performance-based activities essential to degree programs in the professional schools include internships, recitals and other performances, portfolio development, student teaching, etc. In addition, recognized student organizations often have a community outreach component. Students participate in organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, IC Students for Sustainability, and the International Club. The presence of professional schools and the liberal arts in one institution allows for the opportunity for students to have a diverse educational experience that includes out of classroom experiences. Adding to that is the fact that the Division of Graduate Studies is creating several professional development and certificate programs that provide experiential and performance-based opportunities. The rich performing arts programs also provide the opportunity for students to participate in and to experience the arts. Given the comprehensive nature of the College, students from different schools interact in the shared spaces of residential life, dining, the classroom and clubs and organizations, theater productions, concerts at the School of Music, the campus television station and radio station, and services such as those offered by the Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Hearing clinics. Trainers in the Fitness Center and with athletics teams provide exposure to the future professionals in those fields. The broad offerings of the many student organizations provide hundreds of opportunities to encounter diverse points of view and experiences.

Facilities: “Maintain and enhance the College’s academic, residential, recreational, athletic, and administrative facilities and grounds.”

The first goal of this priority is to “develop and maintain a facilities master plan consistent with the College’s mission statement.” To accomplish this goal the College created the Facilities Planning Committee, a representative group of faculty, staff, and administrators that oversees all facilities planning on campus. This group makes yearly recommendations to the Budget Committee regarding funding for facilities requests made by various campus divisions. The first task of the Facilities Planning Committee, as articulated in the Institutional Plan, was to “engage planning professionals to develop the master plan in consultation with the Facilities Planning Committee and other appropriate campus representatives.” The College engaged Sasaki Associates to complete the College Master Plan. Among the additional goals are the following: ensure optimal use of grounds and facilities, develop a review process to ensure that teaching, learning, and meeting spaces receive appropriate and timely updates to both electronic equipment and its supporting infrastructure, address ADA compliance issues, and enhance residence hall offerings. Since the development of the Master Plan the College has made progress in its execution: The College Circle apartments have been completed, the business school building will be completed in fall of 2007, the College has broken ground on the new Gateway Building, and the Athletics and Events building is in the


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planning stage. Just as important, with the assistance of Holt Architects the College is finalizing plans for departments to move into space made available by the completion of the new business school and Gateway buildings, which will alleviate space needs, especially in the School of Humanities and Sciences. The College has also made advances in improving the accessibility of its facilities. Several buildings have undergone renovations in restrooms and classrooms, and many entryways have had automatic door openers installed. Assistive living devices are now available in several auditoriums, including Ford Hall, Emerson Suites, and Dillingham Center.

Quality of Student Life: “Enhance our students’ educational experience and help ensure their success through the development of comprehensive residential, cocurricular, and campus life programs and support systems.”

The Division of Student Affairs has developed a written mission statement and a set of divisional goals for the academic year tied to the Institutional Plan, and it has made rapid progress in the implementation of several important priority goals. The first goal of this priority is to “identify, acknowledge, and support the needs of underrepresented student population” which includes international students; students of color; and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students. In response, the College has employed a full-time LGBT coordinator, an additional employee in the Office of the Coordinator for Students with Disabilities, and has developed initiatives to support students of color. The second goal is to “enhance residential life to position the College as a national model for living/learning environments.” In response to this goal the College has created apartment-style living in the new Circle Apartments and has continued to renovate other residence halls. Additional goals include acknowledging and valuing the importance of cocurricular activities in students’ educational experiences and fostering a sense of unity and tradition throughout the campus.

Quality of Work Life: “Ensure that Ithaca College is seen as a first-choice employer.”

The College has made significant progress toward realizing the primary goals in the area of quality of work life. The first goal of this priority is for employees to have “balanced workloads appropriate to their job descriptions,” and this includes both faculty and staff. For staff, the College engaged consultants to investigate compensation, workloads, and benefits packages, leading to the adoption of a new job classification/compensation system. Other goals support professional development for staff. For faculty, the College initiated the Faculty Workload Project which, upon completion of program review, lowered teaching loads in many departments from 4/4 to 4/3. This combined with the Center for Faculty Research and Development release time program, which awards release times to faculty who compete successfully, can effectively drop teach loads for individual faculty to 3/3 in a given year, allowing more time for scholarship, research, writing, performance-based opportunities, and other professional development. Another goal—to enhance opportunities for employee development programs—has been supported by the creation of LeaderShip and other programs available to staff and faculty.5

5 See Chapter 4 for further details regarding these and other initiatives..

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Resource Development: “Enable the College to become less tuition-dependent and reliant on debt by increasing financial resources from public, private, and entrepreneurial sources.”

The first goal of this priority calls for the College to identify, from the strategic planning process and the facilities plan, the needs of academic units to determine which could be met through fund-raising initiatives. In response to this goal, the College has created its first comprehensive campaign to directly support the priorities in the Institutional Plan. The campaign is both maximizing opportunities for external funding resources such as grants and major donations as well as developing a culture of philanthropy that reaches the entire campus and alumni community. Additional goals include maximizing financial support from private and public sources, strengthening understanding of the College’s mission and future to increase support, working towards creating a culture of giving, defining objectives for and increasing revenue from the Division of Continuing Education and Summer Sessions, and exploring other sources of revenue. To help further these goals the College has focused on training trustees to become more active in fund raising, garnered a number of lead gifts, expanded the role of volunteers in all aspects of fund raising, increased “hits” on the College website, formed a faculty task force to help the Office of Institutional Advancement with its work, and expanded for-credit undergraduate and graduate offerings during summer and break periods and at off-campus locations.

Technology: “Ensure that Ithaca College is a recognized innovator in blending contemporary technology with educational techniques and administrative support practices.”

The goals for this priority include establishing an acceptable standard for computing and communications equipment in classrooms and other instructional and work areas; identifying a baseline set of computer skills for students, faculty, and staff; utilizing web technology to change the way the College provides administrative support services; examining the current budget process and exploring new models for maintaining and updating computing and communications technology. To further this priority the College has developed a number of initiatives to enhance its services including the technology renewal program, which automatically replaces most of the College’s computer systems on a three-year cycle; the Center for Educational Technology, which provides a formal home for initiatives related to integrated computer-based learning technologies in the classroom, and upgrading websites; implementation of the new financial and student information systems; and educational programs for faculty and staff. While the College has developed a number of policies to “ensure that its major technologies, equipment, and facilities needs are met” one of the most important was the creation of the Information Technology Planning and Advisory Committee (ITPAC), which is discussed later in this chapter.

Administration of the Institutional Plan: the Planning and Priorities Committee

The Planning and Priorities Committee is responsible not only for the creation of the Plan but just as importantly for ensuring that its goals are implemented. It chooses Areas of Focus that will receive funding in a given budgetary year, monitors the status of our implementation strategies, and issues periodic reports to demonstrate what we have accomplished that was called for in the plan. Members of the Planning and Priorities Committee are the provost and vice president of academic affairs, two other vice presidents, appointed by the president; two deans, appointed by the president; seven faculty members preferably at least one from each of the five schools, one from the all-College Faculty Council, and one from the all-College Graduate Council; two representatives of the administrator/professional staff, appointed by the president; four representatives of the Staff


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Council, recommended by the Staff Council; three representatives of the student body, recommended by the Student Government Association, and the president, ex-officio.6

The Areas of Focus for 2008 include the following:

Academic Program Development—Continue development of the Ithaca Seminar Program, Honors Program, and recommendations of Core Experience Task Force.

Diversity—Continue, under the leadership of the President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity, evaluation and Implementation of Diversity Task Force recommendations and related initiatives compiled in 2005.

Enrollment—Continue to increase College-wide retention, web pages, and recruitment efforts through e-technology; continue to increase faculty involvement in recruitment; continue to strengthen enrollment; explore opportunities, under the leadership of the President’s Enrollment Planning Task Force, in the development of student enrollment and retention strategies.

Experiential and Performance-Based Learning—Continue to enhance opportunities for IC programs, including Washington, LA, Antigua and London Programs; continue to improve the coordination and quality control of internships, and other opportunities; continue to expand service learning and learning community opportunities.

Facilities—Continue to enhance the quality of residential hall facilities; continue to improve accessibility; carry out planning, design, and construction of new the Athletics and Events Center and the new administrative-space facility and related re-designation/use of various spaces; continue to monitor progress on commitment to the Talloires Declaration and share updates with campus.

Quality of Student Life—Continue to support the needs of underrepresented student populations; continue to identify opportunities to enhance the campus resident life program; continue to assess and strengthen academic advising and support services.

Quality of Work Life—Continue to implement recommendations.

Resource Development—Complete public phase of comprehensive campaign; continue to brand and market the College; continue to build a culture of philanthropy on and off campus; continue work to strengthen the College’s identity.

Technology—Continue development of strategic technology planning under the aegis of the President’s Advisory Committee on Technology; continue to implement recommendations of the Kaludis report on technology to include baseline skills; continue implementation of the student information service; continue study of how technology projects fits with tenure and promotion process and determine avenues for peer review of these projects.

Toward the Next Institutional Plan

The primary accomplishment of the implementation of our Institutional Plan has been the creation of a culture of planning at Ithaca College, which requires that all activities of the College be submitted to review and renewal. The plan is no exception: this year we begin planning for the next Institutional Plan, nine years after the formation of the original All-College Planning and Priorities

6 See Chapter 6 for further discussion of the role of the PPC in institutional assessment.

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Committee, building now from this exemplary base. The provost is charged to engage the Committee in the next planning cycle, beginning in November.

Culture of Planning

Subsequent to the development of the Institutional Plan, each division has established related planning processes that follow from the priorities in the Plan. The following sections demonstrate not only this culture of planning, but also the effective use of institutional resources in service of our mission.

The Master Plan

As a response to the Institutional Plan, the College utilized the consulting services of Sasaki Associates to assist in providing the College with a “blueprint to meet its strategic initiatives relevant to physical planning, and to capitalize on its existing campus assets to make the campus a more memorable and effective learning environment.” The end result is the College’s Master Plan Report approved in 2002. Sasaki Associates was required to present their findings periodically to the College’s administration, faculty, and staff. Overall feedback regarding the Master Plan has been favorable.

The Comprehensive Campaign

The campaign, which will be completed this year, has an established goal of $115 million, $108.7 million of which has already been raised. The following outlines the priorities of the campaign, and their correlation with Institutional Plan priorities:

• Academic Program Enhancements—expected to fund existing programs, including the Ithaca Seminars, honors programs, mentored research internships, and fieldwork opportunities. Money will also fund faculty research and attendance at academic conferences. Campaign goal—$6 million. (“Academic Program Development.”)

• Supporting our Students—expected to fund new and existing scholarships for students to offset the rising cost of tuition and provide the College with more financial aid options, and to enhance students’ experiences through improved programming. Campaign goal—$30 million. (“Quality of Student Life”; “Resource Development.”)

• New Student Living Spaces—the Circle Apartments, providing 700 beds, apartment style, and built in conjunction with a private developer. Campaign goal (already met)—$34 million. (“Facilities.”)

• School of Business Building—a 38,500 square-foot sustainable facility, which includes a live trading room, simulated boardroom, 2,000 square foot atrium, classrooms, lounges, faculty offices, and café. A goal for the building is to attain platinum certification through the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) rating system of the U.S. Green Building Council. Estimated cost—$19 million, $17 million raised by the campaign. (“Facilities.”)

• An Athletics and Events Center—a 130,000 square-foot building expected to house a six lane, 200-meter indoor track, an indoor field for soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, softball, baseball, and football practices, and seating and floor space for large-audience events. Estimated cost—$48 million, $35 million to be raised by the campaign. (“Facilities.”)


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• Ithaca Fund—annual giving by alumni, parents, friends, and the senior class that funds visiting scholars and artists, technology, faculty/student research, financial aid, and the library. Campaign goal—$8 million. (“Resource Development.”)

The Budget Process

None of these nine priorities would be met were it not for budgetary processes that ensure that their implementation strategies arrive at the budget table in a timely manner. The nine priorities of the College’s Institutional Plan are addressed throughout the annual budget process. This is done at all levels. Further planning continues throughout the fiscal year at both the department and school/division levels. The budget process ensures allocation of resources to continue the operation of existing priorities initiated in prior years as well as resource allocation for planning and priority initiatives that fall within the Institutional Plan. The composition of the budget committee provides full representation to assure that the educational and facilities needs of students are addressed.

The process begins in September of each year with a number of informational sessions or presentations made to the Budget Committee by the Planning and Priorities Committee, Office of Enrollment Planning, and Office of Human Resources. Each department or committee’s presentation informs the Budget Committee of the priorities that have been set by the Planning and Priorities Committee, the forecasted number of incoming students that are anticipated for the next fiscal year, and the suggested increment pool that should be considered for staff within the budget process. The Planning and Priority process is the primary driver for the budgetary process with the forecasted number of students from Enrollment Planning being the basis for which the overall budget is derived. The College has historically set aside approximately $250,000-$300,000 each year to be used for new initiatives that come out of the Planning and Priorities process. However, the College is not limited to that amount. In fiscal year 2008 over $850,000 has been allocated for quality of work life initiatives outlined in the Institutional Plan. The Planning and Priorities Committee, with representation from across the campus, reviews and recommends to the Budget Committee the priorities for the academic year.

Though the College does not possess a formal document articulating the budget process, evidence demonstrates that a process mindful of the College’s priorities and goals is in place. First, the College budget planning process is inclusive of a wide-range of College stakeholders. The process incorporates the input and recommendations of the Planning and Priorities Committee, whose main responsibility is to monitor the implementation of the Institutional Plan and determine annual priorities for budget support.7 The Budget Committee consists of representatives from a wide variety of stakeholders on campus (President, Provost, Vice-Presidents, Deans, Executive Assistant to the President, Staff Representative, two Faculty Representatives, Budget Director, and Assistant Budget Director). One of the faculty representatives on this committee is a member of and elected by Faculty Council. Each year, that representative asks members of Council to determine areas of high priority for faculty that may be budget-related. The faculty representative then advocates for those priorities in budget discussions. Additionally, the College’s Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life conducts periodic surveys of students and their perceptions of campus life. (One example is the Office of Residential Life’s annual Quality of Life survey.) The information gleaned from these surveys is taken under consideration in the budget planning process and in the past has resulted in budget dollars allocated for items such as residential hall renovations and new student

7 The Ithaca College Policy Manual provides guidelines for the role of PPC; See 1.6.2.13.

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services. The budget process is also informed by reports presented by representatives from key areas on campus including the Office of Finance and Administration, the Office of Human Resources, as well as the Office of Enrollment Planning. Proposed budgets are presented to the Board of Trustees for review and approval. This body includes faculty, staff, and student representatives. In addition, yearly memos from the Vice-President of Finance outline budget process guidelines, making specific reference to Institutional Plan initiatives.8 A newly constituted committee has been created, chaired by the dean of the Park School of Communications, to review budget protocols.

Evidence of the budget being directly linked to the Institutional Plan is seen in the budget process itself and the parties that determine the budget. The Planning and Priorities Committee is required to “assess institutional progress in meeting its goals, update the Institutional Plan and annually identify priorities and goals for consideration at the budget table.” The Committee also provides the faculty, staff, student leadership, and non-budget team administrators the opportunity for input, dialogue, and review on budget, planning and priority issues. The budget process begins early in each academic year as recommended priorities, selected by the Planning and Priorities Committee, are shared with the Budget Committee, which includes representation from a wide range of stakeholders. Further connection between the Institutional Plan and the budget process is evidenced by the overlapping membership between the Budget Committee and Planning and Priorities Committee. This allows for the discussions of the Budget Committee to be constantly informed by input from representatives from the College’s planning committee. In addition, since the creation of the Institutional Plan, updates are issued by the Planning and Priorities Committee every two years in order to summarize priorities and goals that have been accomplished or initiated, as well as inform the campus of the Institutional Plan Areas of Focus put forth for the current budget process.9

Since the 2004-2005 budget year, a specific line for Planning and Priorities initiatives has been included in the budget. (Copies of budgets will be provided in the documents room.) Budget dollars are first allotted for on-going costs, (e.g. academic programs, utilities, benefits, salaries, etc.) and departments are typically funded at the level they requested the year before, not necessarily on what they actually may have spent. Due to this approach, additional dollars for new initiatives are limited. Even though new money for planning and priorities initiatives has been and continues to be limited ($300,000 budgeted for 2007-08), it is important to recognize that many of the on-going expenses support goals and initiatives outlined in the Institutional Plan.

As of the 2006-2007 academic year, before any proposal is considered by the College’s Academic Policy Committee, all requests for new academic programs must include an authorization form (in addition to the regular new academic program form), with the signatures from dean, provost, and president, in which the requesting school or division articulates how the program will contribute to the advancement of the College’s Institutional Plan. Finally, probably the most significant evidence that the College’s budget and planning processes work in tandem is seen in the many initiatives that now exist in academic program development, diversity enrollment, facilities, quality of student life, quality of work life, resource development, and technology.

8 See at http://www.ithaca.edu/budget/Budget%20Process%202007.htm, the website of the Office of the Budget.

9 The most recent Campus Update and this year’s Areas of Focus documents are available at http://www.ithaca.edu/president, under “Reports and Initiatives.”


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Budgetary planning is completed at all levels of the College. Deans, associate deans, and staff (as defined in each school) conduct regular evaluations of their operating budgets and expenditures with the goal always to be in support of the unit mission. Deans look carefully at such critical factors as enrollment size and relevance to institutional mission as well as productivity and affordability. Chairs and faculty participate in this process, as well. Ultimately this process is driven by the College’s budget planning procedure and review by the provost. Strategic plans exist for the following schools: Business, Health Sciences and Human Performance, and Humanities and Sciences. The student affairs division requires meetings every two weeks within each subunit to monitor spending and allocation of funds throughout the fiscal year.

As stated in the foreword to the College’s Institutional Plan, “fiscal stability and stewardship” is an assumption and is one of the “constants in the way it informs the plan itself.” Since the last Middle States review, the College has continued to be on firm financial footing. The bottom line has ranged from 1.2% to 4.3% of the entire budget. (In rating an institution’s borrowing capacity, Moody’s Investor Services looks for a bottom line between 3-5%).

Historically, Ithaca College has been enrollment dependent for its financial resources. It continues to be so. Although many of the College’s peer and aspirant institutions also rely on tuition dollars for much of their budget, what may set Ithaca College apart is the severity of its dependence on enrollment numbers for budget dollars. That said, the College continues to be fiscally sound, largely due to its conservative approach in developing its budget. But not only is it fiscally sound; it now bases its fiscal decisions on a cohesive planning process that follows from the vision and mission of the College. This helps to ensure that every dollar spent contributes to the greater good of the school and its students.

Information Technology Planning and Advising Committee

Instructional technology in general, particularly as it supports academic programs, is a priority for Ithaca College, in terms of strategic planning, budgeting, and execution. In 2004, the President established the Information Technology Planning and Advisory Committee (ITPAC), charged with preparing an information technology strategic plan and ongoing advisory services for the College.10 ITPAC's Long Range Strategic Plan was issued in 2005; it includes an evaluation of current status, a benchmark review of 11 comparable institutions, and the planning and prioritization of 40 information technology initiatives with an emphasis on academic programs. The committee, composed of staff and faculty from across the College, continues to advise the President on campus-wide information technology planning and priorities and to develop and maintain a strategic information technology plan that supports the College's mission, Institutional Plan, and academic, administrative, and outreach activities. ITPAC has enabled the College to be intentional about its technology choices and to respond more nimbly to technological advances that aid instruction.

Academic Planning and Program Review

Planning and Program Review in the Schools and Divisions

The Institutional Plan calls for planning and assessment in every academic unit in the College. In Academic Affairs each school began a process of planning with various outcomes: Music completed a curricular review in 2001; Health Science and Human Performance established a vision and six

10 See http://www.ithaca.edu/itpac/.

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priorities with annual reports on progress; Humanities and Sciences has written a strategic plan with seven priorities; Business wrote a strategic plan with five-year budget projections and a faculty management plan, in addition to their 2003 AACSB accreditation self-study. As is true in many other areas, schools approach planning differently and this is reflected in their planning documents. The School of Business’s plan was revised in January 2004; School of Health Sciences and Human Performance, April 2003; School of Humanities and Sciences, 2002. These plans identify a school mission and note priorities and goals that are included in the College’s Plan. Noted in these documents are goals for student quality, technology, facilities, student diversity and curriculum. Business notes specific objectives under areas it identifies as important. The Health Sciences plan includes specific action steps for each goal and steps to be taken to meet each goal. The School of Humanities and Sciences Strategic Plan was developed in 2001 and identifies seven priority areas with goals, implementation strategies, and key performance indicators for each goal.

Curriculum review and planning as noted above often occurs as the result of the push for accreditation or accreditation renewal within the units. The most recent example is AACSB accreditation for the School of Business. Direct reference is made to the College mission and the Planning and Priorities Committee goals. The School of Health Sciences and Human Performance Strategic Plan (approved April 2003) is updated on a yearly basis indicating goals achieved and objectives for the following year. It is organized on the school’s vision and the College’s mission and Institutional Plan. Within the last five years, the departments of Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Exercise and Sport Sciences and Therapeutic Recreation and Leisure Services and Health Promotion and Physical Education accomplished major changes in their degree program offerings to reflect accreditation guidelines and New York State Teacher Certification Requirements (effective Spring 2004). In 2007 the School of Music successfully completed its reaccreditation self-study for the National Association of Schools of Music. College-wide accreditation through the Regents Accreditation of Teacher Education (RATE) was completed for all teacher education programs.

As a result of internal review, the Division of Graduate Studies has undergone significant transformation in the past five years, leading to program redesign and development of a substantial number of new programs including the doctorate in physical therapy, the Master of Arts in Teaching, the Master of Business Administration, and others as well as professional certificates.

Department-level Planning

As noted in the College’s 2002 Middle States Periodic Review Report, the College began (in 2001) a five-year process for every academic department to complete a self-study review and assessment of curricula and student and faculty accomplishments, as called for in the Institutional Plan. Within each school, programs were provided a complex framework for a program review, sent out by the Office of the Provost. 11 Virtually all programs have completed the process, including annual and three- to five-year action plans. Most of the reviews involved external reviewers as identified in the program review guidelines. As of spring 2007 all academic units, with the exception of the Department of Education and the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies, had submitted Academic program review reports to the Office of the Provost. The review guidelines ask departments to indicate their mission and goals and how they relate to those of their school and the College. In addition, plans for the next five years in the areas of curriculum and program development, student learning outcomes, staffing resource needs, and other aspects of department

11 The guidelines are available at http://www.ithaca.edu/provost/docs/APAPguidelines/.


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activities are reported. A review of the completed self-studies indicates that departments have done this, some in more detail than others, and that written feedback and suggestions on the report have been provided by the Office of the Provost.12

An examination of thirty-two departmental planning and assessment documents produced since the previous Middle States review shows that seventy-five percent of these entities explicitly relate their departmental goals and ongoing plans to the College’s Institutional Plan. One department related its goals only to those of the school in which it resides, and the remaining twenty-two percent of the departments made no explicit references to overarching goals of either the College or their school. These departments, however, are concentrated in areas with externally imposed goals relating to licensure or certification. In such cases their departmental goals refer explicitly to external requirements, and planning is in the context of improving or continuing the performance of the department in meeting/maintaining these requirements. In no case, however, do these departments proffer goals that are in any way inconsistent with the Institutional Plan.

In specifying goals and plans for their implementation, a substantial number of departments referred to their role in contributing to the highest level of goal setting—“creating opportunities for shared academic experiences” and “enhancing students’ educational experience.” Others, however, make explicit references to their departments’ plans to contribute to a specific performance indicator of the Institutional Plan, such as “increasing the number of ALANA faculty,” and “increasing the number of their majors having internship and volunteer experiences.” Planning initiatives requiring additional resources appear uniformly consistent with both the Institutional Plan and the Ithaca College Mission Statement, especially in the areas of technology and workload issues addressing new and additional faculty responsibilities.

Culture of Planning at Work: Sustainability

Although the nine priorities addressed above form the basis of the College’s Institutional Plan, sustainability has become a core value for Ithaca College, starting publicly in 2001, when the President endorsed the College’s Comprehensive Environmental Plan, and continuing into 2007 when she signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a nationwide sustainability initiative of over 300 higher-education institutions. The College strives to be at the forefront in integration of sustainability, as seen also in the College’s signing of the “Talloires Declaration” in February 2006. The signing of this declaration committed Ithaca College to a set of 10 action steps to achieve greater campus sustainability. The College has been very effective with its efforts to integrate sustainability thinking into the curriculum, college operations, including its building projects, and community outreach. The College’s commitment to sustainability is infused in our educational mission and planning at all levels, including in our human resource values. In our mission to help students share the responsibilities of citizenship and service, in our goal to support the development of our employees, and in our efforts to commit to the environmental stability of the world, we are modeling for our students ways to contribute to long-term global solutions.

12 Please see Chapter 6, below, for a discussion of program review and student learning outcomes assessment.

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Chapter 2: Leadership Purposeful interaction among Ithaca College’s trustees, on-campus governing bodies, and administration serves the College’s student-centered mission and ensures ethical adherence to policy, including support for academic and intellectual freedom.

Under the leadership of senior officers, deans, directors, and other managers, the College has succeeded in implementing many new initiatives as well as maintaining high quality in continuing programs, all the while adhering to core mission and values, ensuring that they are communicated clearly and consistently, and in integrating them into its decision-making processes across campus. Additionally, the past ten years have seen significant enhancements of the College’s shared governance system, especially regarding participation by faculty, staff, and students in decision-making throughout the campus. Throughout this period of rapid change, we have maintained our high ethical standards and commitment to integrity.

Governance and Administration

The Ithaca College Policy Manual

Until 1999 the College had no accessible or central policy manual. Individual units had their own policies, and the College as a whole also had a set of policies, but there was no centralized source for or coherent presentation of the policies of the College. At that time, the Board of Trustees investigated the governance structures at the College, and, with the participation of faculty, staff, and students, produced a new Faculty Handbook, subsequently included in a new Ithaca College Policy Manual (ICPM). At the direction of the president, the vice president and general counsel collected and organized all institutional policies and posted them to a central website. The Division of Legal Affairs has exclusive authority to change the text in the ICPM, following consultation with appropriate constituent groups; needed revisions take place annually.

The ICPM specifically outlines the governance and committee structure and how this structure is designed to ensure clear communication and involvement in decision-making.1 Ithaca College has a number of standing committees which set College policy and outline College procedures: the Academic Calendar Committee, Academic Policies Committee, Campus Life Committee, Library Committee, Life Safety Committee, Planning and Priorities Committee, Parking Appeals Board, and Parking Policy Committee. These groups “are investigative, deliberative, and advisory bodies that report their findings or make their recommendations to the appropriate officer of the College after consultation with the College community.”

Ithaca College maintains Faculty and Staff Councils and the Student Government Association, which act as liaisons for their constituent groups with the administration and recommend many policy and program changes for the College. The College also maintains a number of administrative councils that provide communication among faculty, staff, and administrators on campus: both official groups such as President’s and Deans’ Councils, and ad hoc groups such as Academic Cabinet and the Assistant/Associate Deans’ group. The ICPM provides guidelines for keeping and sharing minutes, agendas, reports, and more for all committees and councils. The Joint Committee

1 See ICPM 1.6, “Internal Governance at Ithaca College.”

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of College Councils (variously called the Tri-Council and the All-College Communications Committee) is composed of the executive officers of the College and the executive committees of Staff Council, Faculty Council, and the Student Government Association, and is convened for specific purposes when necessary. The President’s Council meets with the executive committee of Staff Council once a semester, and the president meets frequently with the Chair of Faculty Council, with the Executive Committee of Faculty Council, and with the Faculty Council when specific issues arise. The president attends at least one full Staff Council meeting each semester and meets frequently with the Student Government Association. Other groups that facilitate interdepartmental communication include the Administrative Assembly (vice presidents, deans, and most directors), which meets once a month, and the Deans’ Council, which meets every other week. Each semester the Offices of the Provost and of the President coordinate an informational meeting for all faculty. The President’s Office also coordinates a College-wide staff meeting each semester. Non-academic divisions have meetings that involve all department directors.

Board of Trustees

During the past ten years, Ithaca College’s Board of Trustees has become an increasingly engaged, committed, and active board.2 As the principal governing body of the institution, the Board has clarified and enhanced its procedures, including membership and diversity, campus communication, fiscal management and resource development, conflict of interest policies, and planning and assessment.

Membership

The Board’s Trusteeship Committee is responsible for recruiting, training, and evaluating board members, as well as ensuring the diversity of membership. The secretary to the Board of Trustees records the following information on all members: geographic location, relationship to the College, race, gender, profession, and length of service. Trustees serve their first term of active membership for four years and subsequent term(s) not exceeding three years each. Trustees may be elected to serve up to three consecutive terms. As members are completing their terms, the trusteeship committee looks at potential new members with diversity as one of their criteria. In 2005 the membership of the Board expanded from a maximum of 28 members to a maximum of 35 members in order to allow greater flexibility to select new trustees who might diversify the Board.

Leadership of the Board is maintained by its chair and vice chair, elected by the entire board from the membership, and executive committee, composed of the chair, vice chair, chairs of standing committees, the last Board chair if still serving as an active Board member, and the president of the College ex officio.

The Board includes one faculty member, one staff, and one student member. While these members are not elected representatives of their constituencies—nominees are elected by their constituent groups and selected through interviews with the Board of Trustees Trusteeship Committee and then elected by the full Board of Trustees—their positions are in place to make sure the Board of Trustees considers faculty, staff, and student perspectives. In order to ensure their interaction with a broader group of campus constituents, the Board of Trustees invites other selected faculty, staff, and students to a lunch at least once a year. These invitations are advertised through Intercom, the

2 See ICPM 1.3, “Board of Trustees.”

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community’s internal bulletin board, and through Faculty Council, Staff Council, and Student Government Association.

Communication with the Campus

Several times per year, the Board of Trustees schedules a formal, educational session on an aspect of campus life during one of its meetings. Over the past three to five years these sessions have included presentations on athletics, residential life, the Park scholars, diversity, and the library. More informally, Board members receive regular informational mailings from the Office of the President, including all press releases, the weekly Ithacan, and the president’s report to the Board of Trustees, which is produced three times a year and contains comprehensive information from all of the schools and all of the major divisions. Members of the Board also have access to Intercom. In addition, the board invites newly-promoted faculty and their chairpersons to an annual dinner during the fall semester.

Fiscal Management and Resource Development

The Ithaca College Board of Trustees Audit Committee is responsible for institutional practices and recommendations related to fiscal and management accountability. The committee recommended the adoption of an ethics and integrity policy for faculty and staff to help ensure accountability on campus. Appropriate governance bodies on campus—Faculty Council, Staff Council, and President’s Council—ultimately approved the document during the Spring 2007 semester.

The Audit Committee reviews risk management and coverage issues, as well as other potential threats to the interests of Ithaca College stakeholders. Since 2001 those reviews have examined security issues related to information technology; a pending proposal to require background checks of all College employees; and a new Board of Trustees conflict-of-interest policy, which is under development. The inclusion of faculty, staff, and student trustees as full voting members of the Board of Trustees ensures that the interests of these stakeholders are represented and protected. Ithaca College has systems in place to ensure fiscal and management accountability, transparency in operations for members of the Board of Trustees, independence in internal and external audits, and protection of stakeholder interests.

The Investment Committee has developed an investment policy that outlines requirements for asset allocation, and the College has enjoyed better than average market returns in the past several years. Additionally, as the College has worked to develop a new culture of philanthropy on campus, especially seen through the current capital campaign, so has the Board increased its financial commitment to the College. The Board’s by-laws assert that the Board bears a responsibility to contribute financially to the fund-raising goals of the College, and recent increases in Board members’ personal contributions, as well as Board members’ active participation in the campaign, demonstrate the membership’s commitment to that responsibility.

Trustees’ Annual Giving

Ithaca’s Board of Trustees has routinely achieved 100 percent participation in annual giving in recent years and is providing strong leadership in the current campaign. Trustees are well aware of the need for support of both the Ithaca Fund and the other campaign objectives. To date, annual gifts made by trustees during the campaign have totaled over $1.1 million, and the projection for total unrestricted annual giving from trustees is approximately $1.4 million or 17 percent of the Ithaca Fund goal.

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Board Giving to the Campaign

To date, Ithaca College trustees have committed $6.2 million to the campaign and honorary trustees have made gifts and pledges of an additional $2.4 million, for a total $8.6 million in gifts and commitments. This represents 100 percent board participation in the campaign.

Many trustees stepped forward with commitments early in the campaign in order to set an example for other donors and spur excitement and a sense of success. Many have already fulfilled their initial commitments, and there is an expectation that they will be asked to consider making an additional campaign commitment. Some of those discussions are already under way, and we anticipate approximately $3.2 million in additional gifts and new commitments from trustees during the remainder of the campaign. With these additional gifts total giving from the trustees will be $11.8 million, or 10 percent of the campaign goal. Although this percentage is lower than that of many of our peers, it is a very positive trend upon which the College will build.

Conflict-of-Interest Policy

The Board of Trustees adopted formal conflict-of-interest policies in 1995, which were revised in light of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. They include a formal conflict-of-interest policy for all trustees and senior managers who must complete an annual disclosure form identifying potential and current conflicts of interest. The secretary of the board keeps these forms and the executive committee of the board reviews them, as the president does for College officers. Trustees must also disclose any conflicts of interest that come up during a conversation or meeting.

The secretary of the board, currently the College Attorney, is responsible for reminding board members of the conflict-of-interest polices, for monitoring compliance, and for notifying board members ahead of time if upcoming issues might pose a conflict of interest.

Board Planning, Assessment, and Communication

In 1997 the board conducted a comprehensive self-assessment, which led to a series of revisions in its policies and practices. In particular, the board increased its meeting schedule to allow greater interaction among its members, both formally and informally; agreed to distribute board materials well in advance of meetings; opened the audit and finance committee meetings to all members; established an annual report on campus life; and established a requirement that key committees meet more frequently.

The Board completed another self-assessment in 2005–2006, benchmarked against 1997 outcomes. The trusteeship committee reviewed the results at its fall 2006 meeting. The College will bring in a consultant to work with the board as it implements an action plan. The Board plans to decrease the interval between assessments in the future.

The Board of Trustees has also reviewed the governance structures and documents governing the College and its employees. From 1997 to 1999 the Board of Trustees completed a comprehensive review of the Ithaca College governance system (approved May 13, 1999) and included faculty, staff, and student representatives in the review. The following actions occurred as results of this review:

• The Board revised and adopted the Faculty Handbook on August 12, 2003.

• The Faculty Handbook Amendment Committee reviews and submits proposed changes to the handbook on an on-going basis to ensure that the document is kept up to date and is benchmarked among its peers.

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• The Ithaca College Policy Manual was created and posted on the web to assure availability to the entire College community.

• The president created and appointed the Planning and Priorities Committee, composed of faculty, staff, students, and administrative representatives.

• Faculty and staff representatives were added to the budget committee.

• The Board recommended that all schools create and support representative bodies.

• The Joint Committee of College Councils was created.

The impact of these changes has been the creation of many new methods of input and communication, as well as a more transparent process for the creation and revision of College governance documents.

As a means of enhancing transparency in its operations, the Board maintains up-to-date by-laws readily available to the campus community via the College website, including such information as membership, selection process, leadership, training, board member responsibilities (including attention to fundraising), roles and responsibilities of the president, and external reporting responsibilities of the Board.

Faculty Governance

While the Board of Trustees has the ultimate authority of the College, the faculty participate in such fundamental areas as curriculum and instruction; academic policies; courses and programs; academic requirements; standards for matriculation, admission, and academic standing; faculty personnel matters such as definition of staffing needs and recruitment of faculty; evaluation of faculty, including recommendations for reappointment, tenure, and promotion; establishment and review of planning unit, school, and College faculty personnel policies.

Faculty Council, which includes proportional representation from the five schools (DIIS shares faculty with the other schools), is the representative body of the faculty, and it considers issues that affect the faculty and College at large. This group makes recommendations on all-College policies concerning curriculum, programs, grading, appointments, tenure, and promotions. Faculty Council reports its recommendations to the provost and vice president for academic affairs. Individuals, groups, departments, or schools may bring matters for consideration to Faculty Council. As stated above, many policy changes arise in Faculty and Staff Councils. For example, the Faculty Handbook Amendment Committee is a Council committee, and, therefore, Faculty Council can initiate and recommend changes to tenure and promotion requirements listed in the Faculty Handbook. In general Faculty Council weighs in on issues that affect faculty work, such as proposed changes to the campus calendar, student evaluation procedures, and budgetary decisions. (Two faculty sit on the Budget Committee, one a member of Faculty Council.)

Faculty also participate in shared governance through service on committees. Standing institutional committees with faculty involvement include (but are not limited to) the Academic Calendar Committee, Academic Policies Committee, Faculty Handbook Amendment Committee (a subcommittee of Faculty Council), Library Committee, Life Safety Committee, Planning and Priorities Committee, Parking Appeals Board, and Parking Policy Committee.

The level of faculty involvement in Ithaca College governance has increased in both depth and breadth in the last ten years. This is seen particularly in the process adopted for the creation of the Institutional Plan. The Planning and Priorities Committee included faculty, staff, and administration

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in relatively equal numbers, and members of all three employment groups served in the role of co-chairs of task forces. Since the Plan has been a lodestone in determining policy and budgetary decisions, both initially and in an on-going capacity, faculty and staff have a significant role to play in the direction the College decides to take. Faculty Council also is an important deliberative body. This past year it tackled the issue of the content of and process for completing student evaluations of faculty, clarified the need for faculty input in space decisions, including classroom and faculty office allocations—leading to the decision to establish a committee to investigate this issue—and provided important budgetary input (via Council’s representative on the Budget Committee) that resulted this year in the first increase in many years in the College’s contributions to employees’ TIAA/CREF accounts. While some decisions at the College still are made without sufficient faculty feedback, this is more inadvertent than deliberate, and steps are usually taken after the fact to correct the problem. The College has made great strides in the last ten years in the area of shared governance even as it still has a ways to go to instill the concept and actuality of shared governance in all appropriate areas of operation. As mentioned above, one area the College is still investigating is how faculty can best participate in particular decisions regarding facilities allocations, including faculty offices and classroom assignments. To that end—and to ensure that facilities allocations have appropriate administrative oversight—the College has created the Academic Space Management Advisory Committee, co chaired by the Provost/VPAA and the Vice President for Finance and Administration. The committee includes faculty and key staff from each of the schools.

Staff Governance

Staff Council is the representative body for staff at Ithaca College with the exception of employees represented by a collective bargaining agreement. It makes all of its recommendations to the vice president for finance and administration. Issues of staff concern are communicated from that body to the vice presidents and president, who begin to address them. Recent examples include the president’s Quality of Work Life Report that led to restructuring of salary and the flexible working hours policy.3 A recently approved “whistleblower” policy includes procedures that will enable staff to contact a third party (outside the College) if they think that their superiors are making unethical decisions. The annual Veteran’s Day celebration began as a request from Staff Council. These examples demonstrate the support that the College provides once a need is identified.

During the past three to five years Staff Council focused primarily on benefits issues and all-College social activities. The group created the Ithaca College Employee Children’s Carnival and expanded the summer staff picnic to an event for all employees. Staff Council representatives are invited to attend the President’s Council meetings once or twice each year. The Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee recommended that the College increase bereavement leave from three days to five days each year for members of an immediate family. The College also increased sick leave time in its scope, adding dependent parents and other persons in the immediate household. (The Faculty and Staff Benefits Committee is separate from Staff Council, though the two groups share membership and often report to each other.) The College’s organizational structures and management approaches support and encourage staff input in all of its decision-making processes.

3 The Quality of Work Life Report is available at http://www.ithaca.edu/president, under “Reports and Initiatives”; the policy is ICPM 3.6.7.

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Student Governance

The Student Government Association (SGA) is the principle student-governing body. The SGA passes resolutions and then directs those resolutions to the appropriate administrative area. The executive board of the SGA meets regularly with senior administrators, including the provost, president, and vice president of student affairs and campus life. SGA school senators meet regularly with the deans of their respective schools, and representative senators attend Faculty and Staff Councils meetings. Student representatives serve on many of the all-College and ad hoc standing committees, including the Board of Trustees and the all-College Planning and Priorities Committee.

Each school may have a student advisory board. The Schools of Business, Communications, Music, and Health Sciences and Human Performance currently have student advisory boards. Each of the schools has the authority to establish a student advisory board to provide feedback to faculty and administrators. In the Park School of Communications, for example, department chairs submit nominations to the Office of the Dean, which then selects a student representative from each major to serve on the Dean's Advisory Council. The students meet with the dean monthly to discuss student concerns and school initiatives. In addition, the Park School’s dean meets with students in an open forum twice each semester to solicit input from the student body as a whole.

The Residence Hall Association (RHA) represents students who live on campus. The RHA brings issues it finds to be important to the appropriate administrative area. The president of the RHA meets regularly with administrators in the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life: the vice president and associate vice presidents, the director and associate director of residential life and judicial affairs. In addition, RHA representatives serve on committees dealing with residential issues.

Students are deeply involved in the institutional governance processes, particularly those associated with issues and initiatives directly related to their experiences on campus. A good example of the depth of this involvement is the fact that SGA representatives and those from Faculty Council jointly served on a committee to develop common policies and procedures for collecting student statements regarding faculty teaching. This same group is investigating the possibility of a common instrument for those student evaluations. The College prides itself on the degree to which students are included in key decision-making processes.

Shared Governance at Work: the Capital Campaign

An important new development that demonstrates the vitality of the concept of “shared governance” at Ithaca College, as well as the support for community on campus, is the participation in the Capital Campaign of faculty, staff, and students. In 2006 the Office of Development recruited 250-300 students as “campaign ambassadors” through over a dozen presentations to various student groups and from recommendations from the deans. Faculty and staff involvement in the campaign occurs through the Faculty-Staff Campaign Committee. This group’s goal will be to educate the campus on philanthropy and the goals of the campaign. The development office then trains and educates these faculty, staff, and students in philanthropy with the expectation of including them as volunteers in this important College initiative.

Administrative Structure and Leadership

The executive officers of the College are responsible for ensuring consistent implementation of policies across the College and specifically within their units. Unit supervisors and directors are also directly responsible for the implementation of all policies and procedures in their areas. The

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following chart demonstrates the College’s organizational structure, including senior leadership, the five principal organizational divisions, and the academic schools and divisions.

The position descriptions for the senior administrators (president, vice presidents, deans) specifically outline their administrative roles, including qualifications, position responsibilities, and reporting relationships. The Ithaca College Institutional Plan specifically notes the responsibilities of the senior administration in relation to the implementation strategies and key performance indicators for each goal. In addition, all members of the President’s Council have the following statement in their job description summary, which alludes to the positions’ support of the mission, goals, and Institutional Plan:

Serve as a member of the President’s Council, which, in concert with other senior officers of the College, develops institutional objectives, budget priorities, policies and procedures, and overall planning for the day-to-day administration of the College.

Review of administrative structures and services occurs through informal, internal evaluation at the various departmental, school, division, or unit levels. More formal aspects of this structure, such as staffing plans, are part of the College’s budget process, which is driven by the Institutional Plan. Since the current process of reviewing administrative structures and services is inconsistent and informal, the College should consider establishing a method for periodic assessment of the effectiveness of administrative structures and services.4

Evaluation of Senior Leadership

The College employs a multi-source feedback process developed in 1999 to evaluate the performance of the president, vice presidents, deans and associate deans and that includes input from selected faculty, staff, and other senior administrators. Each fall the Office of Human Resources submits to the president the list of the individuals who will participate in the process during the coming spring. Supervisors receive the results of the evaluations and share the feedback and discuss the individuals’ progress with the employee. That discussion includes proposals for improvement, which become part of the expectation of performance moving forward. The process yields detailed and substantive information, and is most effective in its creation of a level of “institutional memory” in terms of the feedback that is provided in any single year. This benchmarking over time allows the institution to track an individual’s progress and development, particularly on issues or concerns that may have been raised or need to be addressed.

In addition to those formal processes, the institution has a series of programs and processes in place that hold senior managers accountable to various audiences and constituencies. The deans, for example, make presentations every 18-24 months to Administrative Assembly (a large group of administrators at the director level and above), describing their goals and accomplishments. In addition, they present goals and objectives for the year at Dean’s Council in the fall, and they report on their progress to that group each spring.

Task Forces and Other Ad Hoc Committees

The past ten years have seen the creation and growth of many new initiatives, many of them organized and advanced by the formation of task forces and other ad hoc committees. In some cases, these committees have become standing committees of the College (as is the case with the

4 See Chapter 6 and the Conclusion for more information.

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PPC—see above); others have performed their stated function, turning over their results for implementation to other, existing bodies on campus.

An example of the latter is the Core Experience Task Force (CETF), which was formed in 2003 to respond to two goals in the Institutional Plan: 1) “create opportunities for shared academic experiences for all Ithaca College undergraduates”; and 2) “explore the creation and implementation of a core set of courses for all undergraduate students.” The task force investigated common experiences at comparable colleges as well at the College, sought input from the community, and developed an “attribute list,” brief statements of learning goals to which all Ithaca College students would aspire by graduation. On the basis of this work, the task force proposed a series of “experiences,” or activities that would provide students with opportunities to progress toward the goals on the attribute list. The task force finished its work in 2005 by submitting their recommendations to the Provost/VPAA. A detailed implementation plan was drafted in June 2006, and reviewed by the Deans’ Council in spring 2007.

Use of External Consultants

Ithaca College relies on outside expertise when it will help an area or a project for which the College does not need permanent, full-time support, or when an outside perspective brings the necessary objectivity, credibility, or breadth of experience to a particular issue or problem. Consultants have been hired, for example, to review the College’s compensation structures and policies; to review the College’s institutional planning around residential life and student housing; to provide expertise and advice around the College’s investment strategies; to review the College’s relationship with its food-service providers; to conduct research and provide input on marketing positioning and branding; to develop strategies for the College’s first comprehensive capital campaign; to plan, execute, and assess the College’s shift to a new information management system; to recruit senior managers or administrators; and to provide external evaluation of individual departments and curricula as part of academic program review.

Managers consult their respective vice presidents about hiring external consultants before doing so. For major projects the College issues a request for proposal, and senior managers select from among the participants. In the case of departmental consultants, department chairs solicit participation from individuals recognized as experts in their respective disciplines or fields. Contracts typically articulate outcomes and deliverables, and the unit supervisor or area vice president evaluates the quality of the consulting work. The outcomes and results are shared with the appropriate constituents across campus.

Benchmarking and Quality Improvement

Ithaca College benchmarks attributes considered by external evaluators (such as U.S. News & World Report), including SAT, class rank, yield, and selectivity, as well as market factors such as tuition, room and board, and financial aid. The College maintains its own list of peer and aspirant schools, based on market evaluations of cross-institutional applications and student enrollment; endowments; and market and student profile characteristics. Ithaca College also benchmarks other Associated New American Colleges (ANAC) institutions, as well as those schools with which it competes for students (for example, SAT overlap schools as reported by the College Board, mutual accepts as determined by surveys of accepted prospects, and those to which it loses prospects as determined by surveys and direct access to national databases). The College also is a contributing member of a consortium of about 135 private colleges that share confidential data for internal planning purposes. Ithaca College also uses publicly available data from national sources based on Carnegie, NCAA,

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and AAUP classification systems; participates in national survey programs such as NSSE and CIRP; and routinely obtains program-specific benchmarks through professional accrediting agencies.

As data has become more readily available over the past 10 years, the number of institutions against which Ithaca College benchmarks and for which it can access data has increased significantly. A 2004 task force charged by the president and provost identified and clarified institutions that Ithaca tracks as peers and aspirants.

Ethics and Integrity

The ICPM clearly conveys expectations of conduct across campus, as does the College’s Student Handbook.5 These documents include policies on sexual harassment; drug and alcohol use; smoking: occupational safety; technology use; intellectual property; procurement of goods and services; purchasing; copyright; standards of academic conduct; and conflict of interest, among others.

In addition, the Student Conduct Code articulates a statement of philosophy that confirms the institution’s commitment to providing for students “an environment that encourages scholarship and personal growth.”6 Students are expected to behave in ways that protect individual rights and freedoms, including freedom from discrimination, freedom of inquiry, freedom of expression, freedom in the classroom, right to institutional participation, and the freedom of association. A commitment to ethical behavior is also demonstrated by the College’s core attributes: The College seeks to foster students’ personal development including “living intentionally by values/ethics.”

The Ithaca College Policy Manual adopts the language of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) on academic freedom and responsibility.7 Each professional area or unit of the College contributes to and/or participates with the appropriate professional organizations and peer associations that provide their own standards of practice. The senior leader of the area or unit is responsible for ensuring compliance with organizational standards of practice.

A policy statement on ethics and integrity was drafted in 2006 and approved by all appropriate governing bodies—Staff Council, Faculty Council, President’s Council, and the Board of Trustees—during the spring 2008 semester. In August 2001 the College included guidelines on intellectual property in the Ithaca College Policy Manual. These guidelines include the copyright policy and guidelines and the intellectual property policy.8 The Division of Legal Affairs convened a new committee in the spring of 2006 in order to review the institution’s intellectual property policies.

5 The Student Handbook is available online at http://www.ithaca.edu/sacl/handbook/index.php. See also ICPM Volume 2, “Policies and Regulations Pertaining to the Entire Campus Community,” as well as ICPM 3.7, “Standards of Conduct”; ICPM 3.6.6, “Conflicts of Interest/Outside Employment”; and ICPM 1.3.3.1, “Ithaca College Conflict of Interest Policy for Members of the Board of Trustees and Officers of the College.”

6 See ICPM 7.1.2, “Student Conduct Code.”

7 See ICPM 4.4, “The Faculty's Obligations, Rights, Academic Freedom, and Code of Ethics.” The College’s statement on academic freedom and responsibility is “excerpted and abridged” from AAUP, Policy Documents & Reports, 1990 edition, pp. 3–4, 5.

8 See ICPM 2.32, “Copyright Policy and Guidelines,” and ICPM 2.20, “Intellectual Property Policy.”

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Grievance Procedures

Ithaca College has a system of policies and procedures to ensure that ethical concerns are formally addressed: the sexual harassment policy, the guidelines for resolving discrimination complaints, faculty grievance policies, and staff disciplinary guidelines and problem-solving guidelines.

Six or seven sexual harassment complaints have been initiated over the previous three to five years, with very few of these actually becoming formal complaints. In the same time period, the number of discrimination complaints has been approximately three per year. The ICPM describes grievance procedures for staff, and during the last three to five years two formal staff complaints were filed.9 There has been no significant change in the nature or pattern of complaints in any of these categories.

A formal grievance procedure exists for faculty, and a separate process covers faculty personnel appeals.10 Formal grievances are almost always the result of personnel action or a hiring decision. During the last three to five years the grievance committee convened just one or two times, and has seen no significant change in the nature or pattern of faculty grievances. Since the Faculty Handbook is continually being updated, this past year Faculty Council asked the Faculty Handbook Review Committee to examine the faculty grievance policy for compliance with AAUP guidelines and to determine if any recommended changes should be considered. That work is on-going.

The Undergraduate Catalog outlines the College’s policy on grade disputes, and articulates a student’s right to petition the provost to waive any academic regulation of the College.11

Although the Division of Legal Affairs serves as a clearinghouse for faculty and staff grievances, there does not appear to be any specific student grievance policy outlining how a student can lodge a formal grievance against another student, administrator, or staff member, except related to sexual harassment and discrimination. Most regulations deal with grade disputes or other similar academic issues. Because no formal process for the resolution of student non-academic grievances or complaints exists at the College, the College may wish to investigate the creation of a comprehensive student grievance policy to address non-academic grievances. Please see the list of recommendations in the Conclusion for details.

* * *

The last ten years have seen many significant accomplishments led by senior leaders at the College, including stabilizing enrollment, creating shared academic experiences for students, conducting the largest capital campaign in the College’s history, creating a campus master plan, and implementing quality of work life, sustainability, and diversity initiatives. These changes—and the collaborative methods by which they have been accomplished—have helped to advance a sense of cohesiveness and community at Ithaca College, an underlying goal of the Institutional Plan.

9 See ICPM 5.4, “Problem Solving.”

10 See ICPM 4.16, “Grievance Policy,” and ICPM 4.13.3, “Faculty Personnel Appeals Committee.”

11 See “Policy on Grade Disputes” in the page entitled “Credit and Grade Information,” at http://www.ithaca.edu/catalogs/ug0708/academicinfo/credit_and_grade_information.php.

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Chapter 3: Admission and Retention Admission and retention programs of Ithaca College, including all of its student services, align with the College’s mission and strive to promote student success in all curricular and co-curricular endeavors.

As a tuition-driven institution, Ithaca College’s admission and retention efforts are central to all that we do to sustain ourselves. Not surprisingly then, the self-study shows that six of our principal themes intersect directly with programs related specifically to admission and retention. Two of them—our diversity initiatives and the linkage of fiscal planning and enrollment stability—illustrate the College’s commitment to recruiting, admitting, and retaining a student body that exhibits excellence at all levels and in all programs, but at the same time ensures the institution’s sustained niche in the increasingly competitive markets for undergraduate and graduate students. Other themes—the comprehensive campaign, development of communities of learning and learners, and other new programs and assessments—reflect the College’s commitment to improve its already strong offerings and opportunities for all students. Finally, our planning processes supercede the others, in that each of them occupies a particular place in the Institutional Plan, which itself addresses on the very highest level our commitment to sustaining our ability to attract and retain a dynamically skilled student body.

Evidence of the College’s adherence and commitment to maintain integrity in its operations is found throughout admission and student support services programs. Key to such is clear, accurate, and honest communication about procedures and opportunities developed for students, both as means for their reaching informed decisions about matriculation and as means for assisting their attainment of academic success while in their degree programs.

Admissions—from Inquiry to Matriculation

Admissions Planning

The College has developed processes that link fiscal planning, enrollment stability, and initiatives to improve the quality profile of our student body. As a tuition-dependent institution, Ithaca sets enrollment numbers based on a complex matrix of projections by major. Projected enrollments are shared with deans, and deans share these with departments. The budget is conservatively established with a contingency in case enrollment projections are not obtained. This contingency budget has been valuable to balanced budgeting for the last several years as enrollments in some programs have fluctuated more than would be optimal. The College also plans to maintain stable enrollments during the expected downturn in high school graduates in the next few years.

Admission numbers and retention information is shared regularly with the faculty by the provost and the deans at departmental and faculty meetings. Strategies are discussed at these meetings that can have a positive impact on retention and admission yield. The Dean of Enrollment Planning regularly uses the data gleaned from these admission reports in discussions with Admission Office staff while planning marketing efforts and recruitment programs as well as in discussions with the provost and deans about student success in particular programs, admission and recruitment strategies specific to schools and programs, potential new majors for consideration, and alternative strategies for marketing majors to prospective students. Changes in marketing and recruitment initiatives as well as programmatic changes are made jointly by the Dean of Enrollment Planning, the provost and the deans.

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The current Institutional Plan articulates an enrollment goal to “modestly increase student body size in targeted cost effective programs.” After analysis and discussion the College decided to increase undergraduate enrollment from 5315 (in FY 2000) to 5750/5800 over a three- to four-year period, and then stabilize enrollment at about that level. The focus of planned growth was in the School of Business and in certain programs in Humanities and Sciences. The rationale for modest growth was based on increased demand that needed to be managed, the baby boom echo that would likely sustain such demand for 7-10 years, and the need for IC to determine enrollment size that we could accommodate for the short and long term. The decision to stabilize enrollment at just under 6000, coupled with the increased demand, gave us the opportunity to improve the quality profile of the student body. While we have not adopted an average SAT of 1200 as an absolute goal to be achieved within a given timeframe, it has become a realistic new direction to follow in terms of potential quality improvement. As our consultants, Scannell and Kurz suggested, increased demand at the front door provided the opportunity to become more selective within the context of institutional type and reputation. The consensus was that we would continue to improve student academic profile in selected programs (e.g. dropping of the bottom 5-10% within certain “accept” categories). In the last five years the average SATs of an accepted student have risen from 1183 to 1206.

The College regularly reviews how it can improve its enrollment outcome projections, with the aim of remaining fairly constant in enrollment numbers while raising our academic profile. Our efforts in academic programs such as the expansion of the Ithaca first-year seminar, the AACSB accreditation, the definition of shared academic experiences for Ithaca College students, the First-Year Reading Initiative, the expansion of living/learning opportunities off-site, and more focused attention on experiential learning opportunities are important to improve the quality of the IC student experience. Recently an Enrollment Task Force was created and charged to be proactive in planning for continued undergraduate enrollment in the range of 5900-6000 FTE in light of the expected demographic downturn in 2010, which will affect the number of applications. Members of the task force are working with faculty, associate and assistant deans, and Marketing Communications to look at messaging and yield activities to increase enrollment and retention.

Based upon population and interest trends as well as historical institutional enrollment data, the Office of Enrollment Planning sets annual goals for the College, individual schools, DIIS and the Graduate Division. Each year the Dean of Enrollment Planning meets with the deans and reviews the past year's results and presents the target numbers by school, department, and major. New information provided for the first time in fall 2006 included the details on currently enrolled students and also the students who decided not to attend IC by school and major and the name of the college that they were attending. Reflecting a nationwide trend, more responsibility related to enrollment now falls to the faculty and administration of individual schools than before, as they assume essential roles in recruiting applicants, including outreach to students who are considering the College’s offers of admission. The effectiveness of the College's efforts on the school level are shown via weekly reports from the Office of Enrollment Planning that are now sent via email to deans and associate deans every Friday afternoon showing the number of applicants, paid applicants and ultimately matriculated students. These reports also show a comparison to the previous year’s numbers and current and past SAT scores. Some deans share the data with their faculty. All accepted students are surveyed on alternate years to determine the factors that influence their selection of an institution. Annually, names of accepted students who did not enroll at the College are checked against the National Clearinghouse Enrollment files to determine where they actually enrolled. The enrollment and survey data are then shared with deans and departments to determine program

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specific competitor institutions and to influence and improve our recruitment messaging for the coming year.

Institutional goals are based on specific school/division enrollment goals in terms of number, quality and diversity. Over the past ten years the annualized full-time undergraduate degree-credit enrollment (AFUDCE) has grown from 5,267 in 1996-97 to a high of 5,984 in 2003-04. Since then IC goal has been to stabilize undergraduate enrollment at around 5,900. Over these past ten years, applications for freshman admission have increased from 7,418 for Fall '96 to a record 12,342 for Fall '06. Over this period the quality profile of the applicant pool has increased substantially with the average combined total SATs (Math + Verbal) equal to 1118 for Fall '96 to 1170 for Fall '06. The average SATs of an accepted student have risen similarly from 1141 to 1206 over this period, with the averages for paid freshmen increasing as well from 1130 to 1184.

Finally, over these ten years the number and percentage of the enrollment composed of students from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds has increased from 415 (7.2%) to 643 (10.0%). These increases are consistent with the goals and measurable objectives detailed in the Institutional Plan. Both recruitment (prospect, application, and yield) initiatives and as well as retention data are compiled annually by the offices of Admission and Institutional Research and reviewed by staff, administration, and faculty committees to determine what progress has been made and where problems exist that warrant action. Virtually all recruitment activities include feedback loops for assessment that are evaluated at the individual program level.

All indications project “steady state” enrollment across virtually all program areas at the College. The third priority in the College’s Institutional Plan calls for us to “optimize enrollment in all programs while continuing to build a strong academic profile.” Within this priority, the College has identified several implementation strategies and key performance indicators. Most of these strategies have been employed, and the College can report success in several key enrollment areas. Ithaca College continues to revise recruitment and marketing initiatives, improve the admitted student profile, revitalize financial aid and scholarship offerings to offset the cost of attendance for a talented pool of students, and increase enrollment in graduate studies.

Key to this planning is the implementation of the College’s new student information system. Unfortunately early in implementation during the 2005-06 academic year it became apparent that basic functionality delivered by SCT/Banner was not sufficient to support some of the College’s traditional operational processes. This situation put a large strain on the several of the enrollment services functions. The Office of Admission and the Office of Financial Aid were successful even in light of the technical challenges in yielding a class for 2006-07 within the institution’s goal and budget, although response to applicants was delayed that may have impacted yield in several programs. Indications from this current year are that we are realizing benefits from the system as new reporting capacities come on board and staff are more familiar with the tools that support it.

Admissions Staffing

In order to ensure a well-trained staff, the Office of Admission uses several learning strategies to train new staff and volunteers and to update continuing representatives. Examples of these learning opportunities include: an annual training series for enrollment services staff facilitated by deans, department chairs, and directors; role-specific training and documentation for all staff and volunteers; list serves for keeping representatives informed of changes; and professional development conferences. Training session notes and videotapes are accessible to all staff and regular staff meetings for discussing and developing new initiatives and programs. Intercom, the

34 Chapter 3


College’s internal bulletin board, is also helpful in keeping the community informed. Effectiveness of the strategies employed is evaluated through surveys, periodic observation, and goal-setting exercises.

Ithaca College follows enrollment deadlines and other best practices prescribed by National Association of College Admission Counselors Principles of Good Practice in regard to recruitment and admission of students, thus ensuring adequate time and information for prospective students to make enrollment decisions. Familiarity with and adherence to these principles are regular components of training and supervision in the Office of Admission.

Identifying and Contacting Prospective Students

Serving as significant evidence of the College’s commitment to student success is a wide array of programs, policies, and procedures that provide service to students from the time they are first identified as prospective members of our community all the way to their completion of degree programs and beyond. Admissions programs include numerous components that initially identify likely prospective students, such as purchase and referral of student names, the myIthaca portal, annual high school visits, and on-campus recruitment. These strategies are guided by enrollment planning that addresses yield through the ability to increase prospect interest in the College, retention through creating articulate and accurate market messages, and program mix through responsiveness to market demand and cost expectations of the institution.

The Admission office staff, intercollegiate athletic staff, admission volunteers (current students, and alumni), and faculty disseminate general and pertinent program information as is appropriate to the interests of those identified as prospective students: course descriptions and other catalog information, school/division information, and materials regarding specific programs, through hardcopy mailings and increasingly through presentation via the College’s website. In addition to this communication, professional staff of the College, alumni, and student volunteers regularly reach out to prospective students through email, electronic chats, phonathons, postcards, eblasts, and department letters. At the graduate level, prospective students also learn about programs through specific marketing and recruitment efforts of the Division of Graduate Studies, and through personal contact with chairs, faculty, and staff.

The undergraduate prospect pool is further defined and reached through use of research purchased from College Marketing Technologies and use of GoalQuest software in addition to other initiatives. The user-defined myIthaca allows for candidate-specific information to be provided, further defining the College and our programs for the prospective student and applicant.

As part of our increasing attention to student learning outcomes, prospective students, in fact, all interested members of our community and the public, receive such information and other institution-wide assessment results via College publications and the College’s website. More specifically, student learning outcomes and assessment results are provided in the following documents that are sent to students: IC Prospectus; school brochures (including DIIS brochure); additional recruitment and yield mailings. Moreover, the following websites also provide that information: the admission website www.ithaca.edu/admission; the Institutional Research website www.ithaca.edu/ir; and the various school websites and alumni websites www.ithaca.edu.

The Admission Communication Task Force is an advisory group made up of representatives from various campus offices and areas (marketing communications, academic affairs, admission, information technology, and student life). The task force has been looking at the current recruitment communications program and helping to make adjustments in the areas of message development


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and communication tactics. The task force members also aid in ensuring that people within their offices or areas understand the College’s recruitment communications efforts.

Application

Once students apply for admission, the College offers each applicant the opportunity to identify a specific major or program of interest. Both the Office of Admission and the Division of Graduate Studies publish admission requirements.1 In turn, the admission committee evaluates each candidate in light of the rigor of the selected academic curriculum as well as on the attributes that the student is presenting to the committee in the admission application. Some areas such as Music and Theater Arts require auditions, interviews, or portfolio reviews in addition to the general application.

At the graduate level, application and admission deadlines are presented on the division and school/department websites and in all graduate publications and materials. As all of the admission materials are now available and utilized in an online environment, students are instructed on the site itself how to periodically check the status of their application files. In addition, the graduate office sends monthly letters to update applicants on the status of their files. As soon as the graduate office receives a recommended decision for a student from the appropriate department, a decision letter is generated and mailed within 24 hours.

Acceptance in Degree Programs

After acceptance, students then receive a series of communications from both the division and departmental offices regarding deposits, graduate scholarships and assistantships, and other recruiting messages. Initial program placement of students is determined through the application and admission process, academic credential evaluation and, where appropriate, audition and/or interview. Enrolled undergraduate students participate in diagnostic placement exams during first-year orientation in mathematics, modern languages, writing, and music. As of the 2007 Summer Orientation, all except the music exams will be replaced by online versions of the placement tests or evaluations correlated to the SAT. Graduate students take various entrance exams. Other departments require the GRE or GMAT exams and all international applicants must take the TOEFL exam before being admitted. While several departments review undergraduate transcripts for any deficiencies, and require that missing courses or subject areas be made up, there are no placement exams for graduate students.

Retention—Student Support Services

Support services provide opportunities for students that align with the College’s mission, ensuring that the College address issues related to academic success within and beyond the arena of the classroom. Centered primarily, but not exclusively in the Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life, numerous programs exist to aid students:

• Center for Student Engagement—Leadership programs such as LeaderQuest, Cross Cultural Leadership Retreat, Leadership Weekend, Women in Leadership, Student Leadership Institute, and Lead-In

1 See http://www.ithaca.edu/admission/pdfs/ithaca_undergrad_app_info_2007.pdf, and the appropriate section of the Graduate Catalog, at http://www.ithaca.edu/catalogs.

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• Community service programs: Community Plunge, Polar Plunge, Alternative Spring Break, and Make a Difference Day

• Student Organization Development

• Counseling Center

• Health Center

• Judicial Affairs

• New Student Programs (jointly shared with the Office of the Provost)—New Student Orientation

• Residential Life

• Deans’ Offices

• Graduate Studies

Key to the success of these programs is staffing that ensures qualified personnel. For discussion of human resources procedures for attracting, hiring, and retaining highly qualified candidates, see compensation, benefits, and development opportunities in Chapter Four, Faculty and Staff Focus.

Deans’ offices and the Office of Student Affairs and Campus Life, including Judicial Affairs, retain primary responsibility for ensuring consistency in treatment of students regarding academic and non-academic policies. Guidelines established by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) require that the College maintain very close scrutiny over educational records, especially regarding ways it provides information about students to others. The College ensures familiarity with adherence to FERPA guidelines in several ways. All staff members working with personal data are provided a FERPA brochure and are asked to learn the guidelines as they relate to job responsibilities. Faculty members are provided privacy information in the New Faculty Orientation when they arrive on campus, and the student body is informed of guidelines through several publications, websites, and student organization meetings. In addition, all new accounts issued for the student information system require navigation training and a signed agreement by users stating understanding of the confidentiality of student records. Additionally, four links on the College’s website provide information regarding FERPA regulations. In 2006, the Student Government Association became more involved in discussion of student rights, and in response the Office of Institutional Technology Services developed new functionality for the campus directory information website allowing students to restrict information published to the web.

Academic Advising

Academic advising is based on a faculty-centered model that assures each student with a full-time faculty member in the discipline as an advisor. The Faculty Handbook defines advising as including, “…but not limited to, helping students assess academic strengths and weaknesses, explore intellectual career interests and goals, develop plans for a coherent academic program, and register for appropriate courses each semester.”2 Student advising data is tracked on the student information system (known internally as Homer) and administered through the deans’ offices. As a result of the

2 See ICPM 4.12.7.2, “Advising Students.”


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College’s decentralized and faculty-based advising system, advisor-advisee ratios vary widely across campus, depending on the department, division, or school:

• Business—10–25 students per advisor in years one and two, 50-60 students per advisor after sophomore year

• Graduate Studies—17–70 students per advisor, depending on the discipline (Graduate chairs serve as advisors for all graduate students in some departments, while graduate faculty share advising responsibilities in others. )

• Health Sciences and Human Performance—as many as 40 students per advisor

• Humanities and Sciences—10–35 students per advisor

• Interdisciplinary and International Studies—in addition to faculty in the Gerontology Institute, the Division draws on faculty from all five schools, who serve as advisors for DIIS students. Advisee numbers range from 1 to 33 per advisor.

• Music—average of 11 students per advisor

• Park School of Communications—35–50 students per advisor

For students with career goals in either medicine or law, the College provides specific advising services for these programs in the form of the Premedical Sciences Committee and the Pre-Law Committee. These committees, composed of faculty and staff, advise students on coursework, internships, and other areas specific to these graduate programs. Students from any of the five schools and DIIS can utilize these services.

Numerous examinations of advising at the College—including 2000 and 2004 reports from the Ad Hoc Faculty Council Committee on Academic Advising and a 2005 report of the Coordinator for Academic Achievement and Advising Services (a temporary position no longer staffed)—have highlighted issues of inconsistency in the College’s advising practices. Current draft recommendations from the Office of the Assistant Provost primarily support the current, decentralized model of faculty advising, but provide for centralized approaches to training, implementation, and auxiliary advising services.

Academic Enrichment Services

The College recognizes the importance of addressing the needs of targeted populations within the student body, groups of students who may need some additional assistance in navigating processes of admission, matriculation, and progress toward degrees. Upholding the values of diversity, the College is committed to attracting, retaining, and facilitating the success of a student body that reflects such an institution-wide priority. To that end, programs with academic affairs and student affairs pay special attention to the following groups: ALANA students, students with diagnosed disabilities, graduate students, LGBT students, transfer students, athletes, and international students.

A significant transformation is underway in the restructuring of several student support services under a new Office of Academic Enrichment Services (AES). The re-organization to create the AES office was prompted by retention information generated by the Office of Institutional Research, the recommendations of an ad hoc Faculty Committee on Academic Advising, and the accumulated experience over time of faculty, associate deans, and others in seeking help for students. AES is designed to support student success and retention beginning with the freshman year. As stated on the Ithaca College website, “Academic Achievement and Advising (AAA) services exist to help all Ithaca College students realize their full academic potential by encouraging them to use the available

38 Chapter 3


learning resources and by supporting them in their academic planning.” The new director of AES will oversee the following departments: the Higher Education Opportunity Program (HEOP), NYS Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program (CSTEP), and the development of African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American (ALANA) support services, Academic Support Services for Students with Disabilities (ASSSD), and First-year Residence Hall academic support programs.

Student Satisfaction Surveys

Undergraduate student satisfaction and dissatisfaction is measured in many ways and by different departments during a student’s time at the College. The Office of Residential Life has students complete a Quality of Life survey (see documents list for copy of the survey and survey results) on alternate years and uses the information in the survey for comprehensive planning. Quality of Life survey data has led to many changes in student housing in recent years including the establishment of the College Circle apartments, a smoke free housing option, elimination of triple rooms, and more coed housing. In the spring of 2006, the College also began participating in the Educational Benchmarking Incorporated Survey (EBI) to measure residents’ satisfaction. The survey allows Ithaca College to compare our students’ responses to those of six similar schools in our Carnegie class as well as all schools completing the survey. Longitudinal data from these comparisons should prove useful in coming years.

Student satisfaction is also monitored through a variety of other means. For example, the College supports a free press, the Ithacan. We are organized in a manner that provides for student involvement at most levels of our administrative and planning processes, including residence hall councils, SGA, student membership on planning committees, and even voting membership on our Board of Trustees. All student support service offices have public email addresses for handling requests for assistance to complaints and kudos. Our service offices and our Office of Institutional Research administer student surveys, minimally on an alternating year basis, that solicit feedback on the residence experience, the orientation experience, the satisfaction levels of freshmen and seniors via NSSE, and senior and alumni satisfaction surveys. Transcripts of comments submitted on surveys and recorded in interviews are routinely conveyed to the offices/persons referenced in them. For example, feedback from students influenced the College’s outsourcing of the residential network system, establishment of a free local campus phone service, the planned merger of the Offices of the Bursar and Financial Aid, and implementation of the new student information system.

In the Division of Graduate Studies, which enjoys an almost 100% retention record due to the specificity of its programs, student satisfaction or dissatisfaction is routinely determined through several channels, including regular contact between students and department chairs who serve as the graduate student academic advisors. Small departmental program size ensures that each chair/advisor is able to work with individual students each semester to plan course choices and curricular paths. Each graduate department has a graduate student representative to the All-College Graduate Council, and these representatives routinely communicate with their departmental student colleagues to represent their issues and ideas at the all-College level. Any such conversation always merits an All-College Council discussion and response. In addition, the graduate dean spends one full day a year at the Rochester campus conducting personal exit interviews with graduating physical therapy majors. Finally, in each graduate department, just as in undergraduate departments, student and course evaluations are routinely administered and reviewed by chairs and school deans.

In response to concerns for graduate students’ sense of integration within the campus community, recent years have seen significant enhancements to programs. The new student information system


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has removed some sense of “marginalization” that was due to less streamlined and clear graduate administrative and student data system practices. In addition, more attention paid to student correspondence and communication (web, emails, and in-person) has created a more welcoming and informative atmosphere in all graduate programs. Several new events have engaged graduate students in additional ways, most notably the graduate student orientation day during June, the annual graduate student academic colloquium, and the formal graduate hooding ceremony held in conjunction with Commencement. The increasing population of graduate students on the campus will need to be examined in the future for retention and satisfaction successes and challenges.

Exit Interviewing and Alumni Surveys

With the exception of the Business school, exit interviews are conducted by the College rather than at the school level and analysis is done primarily by deans and department chairs. The School of Business has conducted its own surveys of graduating seniors in the last three years (EBI surveys) that capture student feedback on a variety of school and College services. In addition, at times, the School of Business has conducted focus groups, with the help of the College’s Institutional Research office. Last year, the School of Business also started an on-line survey of all students, seeking student satisfaction on a range of continuing and new services.

At the undergraduate level, the five schools and the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies utilize exit interviews and Leave of Absence and Withdrawal reports as well as informal channels to improve admission and retention of students. The Leave of Absence and Withdrawal reports are collected through the Office of Student Affairs by the Coordinator of Special Services and Student Life. All students must participate in a LOA or Withdrawal interview as a required step in the process of formally leaving Ithaca College. The Leave of Absence report is used to examine what other programs of study are of interest to students leaving the College. For example, students have often expressed and interest in Elementary Education, which was not offered at Ithaca College. In May of 2007, as a response to such demand, the College saw its first graduates from the newly-developed MAT degree in Elementary Education. In most schools, advisors are notified when a LOA report is generated for one of their students, but no specific action is taken. In the spring of 2006, the Coordinator of Special Services and Programs was invited to review the process of LOA reporting with the HSHP Dean’s group which is engaged in an internal review of students that take a LOA. In the School of Business, LOA reports are reviewed to see if the reasons for leaving pertain to the academic affairs domain of the School of Business. Specifically, they look to see if students cite program availability (majors in areas that Ithaca College does not have), program quality, faculty quality, student organizations/activities, or academic services (faculty advising, student services, etc.). Over the course of years, the primary reasons given by students have not pertained to the academic affairs domain; most often students have cited financial and personal/family reasons for leaving.

To gather information on the reasons why students choose to leave Ithaca College, the Coordinator of Special Services and Programs in Student Affairs and Campus life conducts personal exit interviews with all students who are leaving the College voluntarily. This information is shared with the deans, associate deans, President’s Council, and others. Information gathered and reported includes a summary of the reasons given by students for leaving Ithaca College, students’ final GPA, if transferring their target institution and major, as well as their current major. Recipients of this report indicate that they utilize the information gathered to examine why students are choosing not to stay at Ithaca College, paying special attention to the academic reasons students may indicate for areas where changes in policy or procedures could make an impact. Recipients also indicate they

40 Chapter 3


examine the reports for trends in the major selected by students who are leaving for possible inclusion into the Ithaca College curriculum.

Each graduate student is also invited to complete an exit interview. Completed exit interview forms and personal interview responses are copied to the pertinent department chairs and school deans, with responses tallied and summarized. Alumni survey results are shared with graduate departments and school deans and graduate committees. Personal, even anecdotal, comments with the graduate dean or department chairs are often brought to all-College Council levels of discussion and review. Course and student evaluations are also reviewed by chairs and school deans. Several policies and procedures have been adjusted, implemented or dropped over the past decade in response to thoughtful input in a variety of forms from graduate students. All of these changes and conversations affect admission and recruitment strategies, and while responses to student input may have far-reaching effects upon general student satisfaction, retention has not been a troublesome issue in graduate programs. Over the past decade only a handful of graduate students have withdrawn due to dissatisfaction with programs or college policies and procedures. Each graduate student that formally withdraws completes a withdrawal form that is signed by the department and graduate dean. Reasons for withdrawal are duly noted and scrutinized for patterns or recurring themes. On occasion, a conversation with the withdrawing student is pursued.

Exit interviews of graduate students and alumni surveys invariably focus to a large degree on student support service satisfaction and dissatisfaction. Input from graduate students in these ways has been, and continues to be, extremely helpful in uncovering weaknesses in our system and in implementing changes towards improving our student support towards the goal of creating the best atmosphere and environment in which our graduate students can focus on their advanced learning and move towards their professional goals.

Alumni (both undergraduate and graduate) also provide feedback to the College through Alumni Satisfaction surveys. Some departments conduct surveys specific to their graduates (MBA Alumni Survey, Speech-Language Pathology Graduate Alumni survey). These surveys ask question about levels of satisfaction with both academic and non-academic areas of the college experience. Faculty and staff provide information about changing expectations through meetings at the department, unit, school, and all-College level. The Ithaca College president and provost host regular (2-3 times per semester) forums for stakeholders to ask questions and exchange ideas of topics of relevance to all aspects of campus life.

Measuring Student Success

Ithaca College measures student success on a variety of fronts including academic, co-curricular, employment, licensure, and clinical. Curricular success is measured in part through student grades, retention, and honor society membership. Co-curricular success is measured through participation numbers, number of active student organizations, community service hours provided, as well as through awards and honors bestowed on students for their co-curricular involvement. Success post-graduation is also measured via survey instruments administered at graduation and post-graduation, which look at full-time employment status and graduate school enrollment. In programs where licensure exams are required for graduates, these numbers are carefully monitored as a measure of student professional success. Student clinical evaluations are also used to monitor student success in those programs where clinical experiences are a required part of the curriculum.

Over the last five years, all academic departments have undertaken major departmental self-assessments. Each of these includes an examination of student learning outcomes and student


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successes using a variety of measures and lead to recommendations for future department goals and objectives.3 Many non-academic departments, athletics for instance, track student academic performance as well, primarily by examining graduation rates. Currently, the average grade point average of student athletes is 3.1. Student athletes are retained and graduate at a rate higher than for non-student athletes. Athletics also tracks the retention of student-athletes deemed to be academically at risk. Retention from freshman to sophomore year averages between 97.3% and 93.1% over a four-year period. All first-year students who participate in intercollegiate athletics are retained at an averages rate of 92%. This compares to the overall College retention rate of 87% into sophomore year. Student athletes also graduate at a rate 13-16% higher than non-student athletes (Admissions Athletics Task Force report 2004). In comparison to our peer and aspirant colleges Ithaca College’s freshman retention rate is solidly in the middle of the group. Ithaca College retains 87% of students from freshman to sophomore year. We retain our mid-group status through graduation where we retain 75% of students through to graduation. The highest retention rates in our peer and aspirant group appear at Villanova University, which retains 94% of freshman and 86% of students through to graduation. The lowest retention rates in our peer and aspirant group are for Mercer University and the University of Evansville, both of which retain 80% of freshman students and graduate only 51% and 61% of entering students, respectively.

Although support services are in place for students with disabilities and other targeted populations, graduation rates of several of these groups lag behind those of the College as a whole, and specifically below graduation rates of white students—74.2% for 1999 and 77.6% for 2000. For example, six-year graduation rates for students entering the College in 1999 and 2000 with a documented disability were 62.6% and 72.3% respectively. Six-year graduation rates for ALANA students entering in 1999 and 2000 were 66.7% and 75% respectively. Graduation rates for African American students in this cohort were 54.8% and 75.7%. These graduation figures place Ithaca College at or near medians and averages for our peer and aspirant institutions cohort.

* * *

In the last ten years Ithaca College has adopted key admissions initiatives that have had a significant effect on the nature of our student body. Our diversity efforts, the linkage of fiscal planning and enrollment stability combined with an improvement in the quality of the student body, technological innovations designed to provide prospective and admitted students with access to important information, and attention to student support services have enabled Ithaca College to position itself as a leader in the marketplace.

3 See Chapter 1 and 6 for detailed discussions of academic program review.

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Chapter 4: Faculty and Staff Focus Activities of the faculty and staff of Ithaca College demonstrate professional and creative involvement in all learning-centered and instructional support activities.

Introduction: Emphasis on Quality of Work Life

The College sees its employees as the single most valuable resource it has in the furtherance of its mission and, therefore, seeks to hire, support, and evaluate personnel performance based on that principle. The College is committed to promoting cooperation, initiative, empowerment, and innovation in the workplace, and new programs and initiatives have been created to support these values. The Institutional Plan set a series of goals including the following, among others:

• Establish balanced workloads.

• Ensure that managers have appropriate autonomy, responsibility, and accountability.

• Create an environment of openness, communication and trust between supervisors and employees.

• Include opportunities for employee development and enhance employee recognition programs.

This chapter outlines the primary policies that govern and guide our work and the major innovations in employee programs. Many of our new initiatives have at their base the desire to support a sense of community, a key value in support of sustainability in human resources. The Workload Project and Center for Faculty Research and Development (CFRD) support faculty scholarship and curricular innovation, which demonstrates to faculty that their long-term professional goals and those of the College can be synchronous. Development programs such as LeaderShip provide employees with not only a skill set to better perform their jobs, but they also provide opportunities to learn about and from their colleagues. All supervisors are encouraged to maintain an “open door” policy with employees that can help provide an atmosphere of open communication. Supervisors work directly with employees to solicit ideas or suggestions they have to improve the work environment. We provide our employees with a comprehensive benefits and compensation package that encourages continued professional growth and physical well being.

In service of community building, the development of appropriate communication vehicles is essential. Communication has been enhanced with the creation of Intercom, the primary vehicle used by Ithaca College to communicate across departments, jobs, and locations. This electronic newsletter is published twice weekly during the academic year and available to all employees through the Ithaca College web page. Intercom allows any employee of the College to contribute an article of interest. The College also maintains a web-based Events Calendar that keeps the campus community informed of all academic and non-academic events across campus. Many departments and schools, such as The Office of Human Resources and the Office of Informational Technology Services, offer a wide range of seminars and workshops to enhance and share skills across campus, and these are announced via Intercom. Websites for information and professional opportunities are easily accessed.

Our decision to address together Middle States standard 10 (faculty) and elements of Middle States standard 3 (institutional resources) as it relates to human resources derives from the Institutional Plan and the work on Quality of Work Life that has flown from it. We acknowledge here, of course,

Faculty and Staff 43

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that faculty and staff roles are different, particularly in regard to the specific instructional responsibilities of faculty. However, the support service role of the staff is crucial to the ultimate success of the College’s mission.1 We describe the processes that ensure that faculty and staff are qualified, prepared, and professional and that the College has demonstrated institutional support for the appropriate advancement and development of both faculty and staff.

Faculty Roles and Qualifications

Ithaca College expectations of faculty roles and qualifications are detailed, according to the type of the initial and subsequent appointments, in the Faculty Handbook, which is now included as Volume 4 in the Ithaca College Policy Manual (ICPM).2 Accordingly, a full faculty workload at the College consists of teaching, scholarship and professional activity, service, academic advising, and other responsibilities or activities as determined by the planning unit/department. The allocation of workload between teaching and other activities varies among the faculty and may include activities such as curriculum and pedagogical development; scholarship and professional activity; academic advising; and leadership positions in department, planning unit, school, or College governance. Under no circumstances is a faculty member to be assigned more than the equivalent of 24-credit hours of teaching per academic year (including time reassigned to other activities) without consent of the faculty member and payment for an overload. However, the Faculty Workload Project has created significant changes in teaching loads for faculty. Overload compensation for full-time faculty is paid at the per-credit-hour (or the equivalent) salary level established for temporary part-time positions.

Faculty Qualifications

In order to ensure that the College’s faculty is academically and professionally qualified, the ICPM specifically articulates the degree requirements for each faculty rank.3 The ICPM also outlines a variety of faculty appointments that gives the College some level of flexibility in meeting its staffing needs, even as it confirms its commitment to the permanence, stability, and long-term commitment that tenure provides.4 Hiring processes require that all faculty job postings and advertisements include degree and credential requirements.5 When a new faculty member is hired, the rank given for the initial appointment is determined according to the same or equivalent qualifications required by the College for promotion to that rank.

Evaluation, Tenure, Promotion of Faculty

The College policies and procedures for evaluation, tenure, and promotion of faculty are primarily described in the ICPM, Volume 4, and further elaborated in the personnel policies, standards and procedures of each planning unit, school, or division. All planning unit and school personnel

1 See ICPM 4.0, “General Statement.”

2 See Appendix ### for table of contents of the ICPM.

3 See ICPM 4.1, “Ranked Academic Faculty.”

4 See ICPM 4.9, “Definitions and Types of Appointments.”

5 See ICPM 3.1, “Ithaca College Recruitment and Hiring Process.”

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policies, standards, and procedures require the approval of the provost and president, who are responsible for insuring compliance with the ICPM. The provost may also request that the all-College Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee or a committee created by Faculty Council assist in the review of the planning unit and school personnel policies, standards, and procedures.6

Major formal evaluations for tenure-eligible faculty normally occur in the second and fourth tenure-eligible years of employment. The tenure review normally occurs in the sixth year but might come sooner if the faculty member came to the College with credit for prior experience. In preparing a personnel file for formal review, a tenure-eligible faculty member and his/her colleagues must follow the Procedures for File Preparation and Presentation.7 In undertaking a tenure/promotion evaluation of tenure-eligible faculty, a planning unit personnel committee evaluates the performance of each tenure-eligible faculty member and makes recommendations with justifications to the dean. In some planning units, the chair will also evaluate the tenure-eligible faculty member and make a recommendation to the dean. After the dean reviews the evaluations that have been submitted, the file is forwarded with the dean’s recommendation to the provost/VPAA for final review.

Criteria for major formal evaluations of tenure-eligible faculty are detailed in the ICPM, as well as in the personnel policies, standards, and procedures documents of each unit.8 Primary considerations include progress toward terminal degree (in the second-year evaluation), progress toward or attainment of teaching excellence, scholarship and/or appropriate professional activity, and service to the College and the academic community. The document clearly addresses teaching expectations, defines what constitutes scholarly/creative work, and outlines the five types of scholarship that lead to granting tenure and promotion at Ithaca College.9 The ICPM also addresses expected service to the department, to the College, and to the profession. A review of governance documents from departments from each of the schools indicate compliance with the ICPM with respect to policies and procedure for tenure and promotion evaluations. Regardless of what type of review is undertaken (annual merit review, tenure and/or promotion review, post-tenure review), each must be based on solid, consistent and clear documentation. It is incumbent upon each faculty member to document teaching, scholarship, and service activities, continuing professional development, honors, and awards. Tenure and/or promotion is granted only to faculty who have fulfilled all requirements and whose credentials have been reviewed by the faculty of the planning unit (where appropriate), the chair (where appropriate), as well as the dean, the All-College Faculty Tenure and Promotion Committee, the provost/VPAA and the president. The president presents all recommendations, including the president’s own, to the Ithaca College Board of Trustees.

One important change in the tenure process has been the removal of the 75% tenure cap/quota per planning unit, effective 2000-2001, which has 1) enabled the College to attract and retain otherwise

6 See ICPM 4.12.2, “Policies and Procedures Regarding Faculty Appointments, Evaluation, Tenure and Promotion.”

7 This document is included as an appendix to ICPM 4, and is available in the offices of the deans and the provost/VPAA).

8 See ICPM 4.12.6, “Criteria for Major Formal Evaluations of Tenure-Eligible Faculty.” Non-tenure eligible faculty may be considered for promotion, and follow the same procedure as outlined here.

9 See ICPM 4.12.7, “Teaching, Scholarship/Professional Activity, Service.” See also the discussion of the “Boyer Model,” below.


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outstanding junior faculty who may have not come or stayed because of the insecurities of the extant tenure quota system and 2) allowed the College to make tenure decisions based solely on the merits of each case.

Boyer Model

A few years ago the College amended the Faculty Handbook to include the Boyer Model of scholarship, as outlined in Scholarship Reconsidered, which legitimized a model that was emerging and appropriate for the College given its emphasis on the scholarship of teaching. The College continues to emphasize teaching above other priorities—evidence of strong teaching is sine qua non for tenure—but expects more scholarship or professional equivalent activity than in the past. The Boyer model expresses the College’s openness to varied styles of professional accomplishment in liberal arts, creative, clinical, educational, commercial, and social service disciplines. Some departments indicate that the model had not affected them. Others see the Boyer model as assisting recruitment and retention by assuring that teaching is primary and that varied professional modes will be recognized. The Boyer model and workload flexibility may help to encourage the wide range of collaborations with students in research, creative, and field activities: A rough survey done by the Office of Academic Funding two years ago (based on IR data) found that on average upperclassman had at least one class per year devoted to independent study, field study, an internship, or a small seminar section. Although no statistical data exist to show how the Boyer model affects tenure or promotion, scholarship about teaching and production of pedagogical materials is explicitly recognized as research for tenure/promotion in a few departmental guidelines and may be assumed in most others. Media productions, performances and creative works are recognized in the corresponding professional departments. Community service is evaluated in several schools (e.g. HSHP) but is a lesser category. The Boyer model accurately expresses a varied and balanced set of priorities in modes of teaching and modes of professional growth, highly appropriate to the College’s mission.

Student Statements

All schools and departments use student responses for evaluating teaching, and virtually all also use faculty peer and/or faculty chair classroom visitations that result in informal feedback to the junior faculty or formal reports to the department chair and/or a department Personnel Committee. Use of a common instrument for students to evaluate classroom teaching is being investigated and could provide a means of comparing and understanding faculty teaching performance. Use of a standardized instrument for all classroom teaching would not prevent a department or school from supplementing it with questions or requests for feedback that they consider distinct to their discipline or otherwise not adequately addressed by the standard instrument. In spring of 2007 a joint Student Government Association/Faculty Council task force was convened with the charge to develop a common set of procedures for the collection of student responses. The College Academic Policy Committee is currently evaluating the recommendations of that task force. Next year the task force will continue its work by investigating the possibility of a common evaluation instrument to be used by all departments in addition to individual department questions that may be added if desired.

Annual Review

All schools and divisions require faculty to engage in annual self-evaluation. Faculty are expected to document the prior year’s professional accomplishments and teaching activities and reflect on those

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achievements. Faculty clarify the next year’s goals and future professional desires (e.g., to complete a manuscript or develop a new course).

Departmental governance documents and responses submitted by department chairs and dean’s offices show that guidelines for determining general and additional merit for faculty vary slightly in terms of procedure, but ultimately take into account the same performance criteria in making merit increase decisions: teaching, scholarship, and service. Eligible continuing faculty members typically submit to the department chair a self-evaluative summary of activities to serve as a record of the past year’s teaching activities, documentation of scholarly and professional activity, and service to the department, the school, the College and the community. Department chairs, or occasionally departmental committees, evaluate the summary of activities, along with collected student evaluations of teaching, and classroom visit reports in making determinations about who will receive general and additional merit increases. The department chairs submit their recommendations to the appropriate deans. All schools have in writing the criteria in the annual review for merit pay for faculty.

A review of governance documents from all academic units indicates compliance with the ICPM regarding faculty reappointments regardless of type.10 Governance documents also make clear that tenure-eligible faculty must meet criteria for the appropriate major formal evaluation in order to obtain renewal. Faculty attaining tenure receive continuous renewal.11

Faculty Role in Curricular Review

Schools differ in the specifics of how and when they accomplish curriculum review, but there is generally a mix of school-wide and department faculty committees. For example, in the School of Business curricular review and assessments are undertaken by relevant faculty committees staffed by tenured or tenure-eligible faculty (e.g., Baccalaureate Curriculum Committee, MBA Curriculum Committee, and Program Assessment Committee). In the School of Humanities and Sciences, all departments are expected to review their own programs via internal curriculum committees, but oversight is provided by the Humanities and Sciences Curriculum Committee, a standing governance body composed of elected members. The Park School of Communications also has a standing Curriculum Committee, including tenure-eligible members from each department and two at-large members. Similarly the process in the School of Music involves three stages: 1) development of proposals within departments, 2) review of proposals by the school-wide curriculum committee, and 3) full faculty approval.

Employee Development

New Initiatives: The Faculty Workload Project and the CFRD Program

The Institutional Plan recognized that the quality of the academic profile of the Ithaca College student was improving, and we wanted to be able to reflect and support that change with increased

10 See ICPM 4.9, “Definitions and Types of Appointments.”

11 Tenured faculty members receive a cumulative written evaluation every seven years, the sole purpose of which is “to aid in maintaining and enhancing the faculty member’s excellence.” See ICPM 4.12.1, “General Information Regarding Evaluation.”


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attention to faculty research and scholarship, particularly as it affects teaching and student/faculty research and collaboration. Therefore, in 1998, the College initiated the Faculty Workload Project as part of a project of the Associated New American Colleges, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The primary goal was to explore how faculty at comprehensive colleges face the challenge of balancing excellent teaching with creative and professional accomplishments. The project was also intended to enhance curricular innovation and experiential learning options for students as well as expand faculty research. Seven departments came forward to investigate through curricular and staffing review how they could reduce teaching loads while maintaining stable credit-hour generation. After this initial phase, departments made workload proposals as part of (and on the schedule of) their participation in academic program review. In a few years, the College moved from a mandated 24-credit hour teaching load to the option of a 21-hour load for all full-time, continuing faculty.

In addition, the College instituted a competitive course release program (the Center for Faculty Research and Development—CFRD), available by application to all full-time continuing faculty, that rewards successful applicants with time to conduct research, write, produce creative projects, and work on pedagogical and curricular advancements. The CFRD annual budget is $250,000-$300,000; the remaining centrally managed faculty development budget is of comparable size.12 A combination of the workload project and the CFRD could allow some faculty in a given year to achieve an 18-20 credit hour load, which supports scholarship and helps the College to be more attractive to potential new hires. These advancements were designed to provide institutional support for the advancement and development of our faculty for the ultimate benefit of our students.

External evaluation over five years of the CFRD grant (ending 2004) confirmed that the Center had assisted the College in the process of making workloads flexible to enhance research, entrepreneurship, and to sustain vitality. The majority of funds in the grant period (60-70%, with modest annual variation) went for scholarly projects, but a large percentage was allocated for curricular innovations, and a smaller but significant number supported new community outreach or experiential learning projects. Some of the research funding was devoted to the scholarship of teaching, such as textbook development, studies of emerging pedagogy, or creation of new resource materials for a clinical field. The 2006-07 and 2007-08 cycle awards (105) fully supported by College funds, sustain the pattern. Projects often have several outcomes, but the primary focus of the latest years’ awards are: 69% research or creative works, including research on teaching or learning; 21% research or materials development for new courses, and 10% for outreach initiatives, new resources for the discipline, or interdisciplinary collaborative efforts.

The Workload Project and the CFRD program appear to be effective means of supporting innovative teaching and increasing levels of expected scholarly/professional activity. Now that the Workload Project is fully implemented, it and the CFRD will be evaluated for their impact on teaching and scholarship.

Faculty Development

Commitment to the professional development of Ithaca College faculty is an important value that is supported by faculty development funds, sabbaticals, and the College’s appointment of a senior

12 The initial grant for CFRD came from the Atlantic Philanthropies; the College has now assumed the full costs for this program, as per the program design.

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faculty member as half-time Coordinator of Faculty Development Activities, who also administers the Center for Faculty Excellence. Additionally, deans have the capacity to award release times for special projects. The College's Office of Academic Funding and Sponsored Programs assists faculty seeking grants, contracts, or gifts for scholarly or educational projects from external sources.

The Faculty Development Committee sponsors activities designed to facilitate faculty vitality and renewal.13 In conjunction with the Center for Faculty Excellence, these programs support faculty growth and development as teachers and scholars through a variety of one-time and ongoing programs. The Center houses the all-College Mentoring Program, new faculty orientation, lunchtime colloquia, annual summer faculty institutes, and a variety of ad hoc workshops.14 The Center also supports faculty communication and skill sharing by offering regular and frequent workshops and discussions on a wide variety of issues and a website that links resources related to faculty members in teaching, scholarship, and other areas of campus life. The Mentoring Program involves small groups of faculty (both new and “seasoned”) meeting every two to three weeks to discuss teaching and career concerns. Skill sharing occurs in these groups and in the relationships that develop from them. New faculty orientation and part-time faculty orientation include resource sharing, and some 200 faculty members have joined an e-mail discussion list in order to discuss teaching skills. The Coordinator of Faculty Development Activities maintains collaborative relationships with the academic deans’ offices, several units in the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life, and the Office of Human Resources.

In the past two years, the Center has instituted two new workshop series, both aimed at extending faculty development through mid-career intentionally and explicitly. In 2006, an ongoing workshop series for department chairs was added to an existing new chair orientation; the series is intended to promote dialogue among department chairs on relevant, rotating topics. In 2007, a workshop series for faculty at any stage in the tenure process was instituted. These new activities are in full support of the mission of the Center—“to support our faculty members as complete teachers and scholars.”

While the work of the Committee and the Coordinator of Faculty Development Activities have been invaluable in supporting faculty development activities on the campus, they cannot replace the instructional support that was available before downsizing in the 1990s resulted in the loss of a full-time instructional support position. Given the emphasis on teaching excellence at Ithaca College, the College should investigate the possibility of returning to that level of staffing in order to provide additional support for pedagogical needs.

The Provost’s office also provides opportunities for internal funding in support of faculty research and teaching; these opportunities are outlined on the website of the office, which serves as a clearinghouse for research support, providing information on College’s funding for summer research, small projects, and collaborative, interdisciplinary work with other faculty and students.15 Travel for professional development—workshops, conferences, programs, and other activities—is supported primarily through funds administered in deans’ offices. Additional travel funds are also available by application in the Provost’s office.

13 See ICPM 1.7.1.1, “Faculty Development Committee.”

14 The website for the Center includes information about these and other activites, as well as a wealth of information for faculty. See http://www.ithaca.edu/cfe/.

15 See http://www.ithaca.edu/provost/.


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The College offers a sabbatical program for which all tenured faculty members are eligible. The faculty member must propose a specific research or study project; appropriate projects are generally approved. External grant seeking is encouraged and is supported by the Office of Academic Funding, which has a budget for matching funds. The Faculty Council is also considering a plan to offer a professional leave program for long-term non-tenure eligible associate or full professors.

Information Technology Services (ITS) provides two resources for faculty. The Center for Educational Technology (CET) provides high-end computers, peripherals, and well-trained student assistants to provide computer and technology support to faculty in developing instructional materials. The Technology Learning Center (TLC) provides drop-in training for faculty and staff and workshops for the entire campus community.16

Staff Training, Development, and “LeaderShip”

The Quality of Work Life priority in the Institutional Plan has two goals: to encourage employees’ participation in staff development programs and to provide a useful review process that enables employees to create their own action plans.

The College has a three-pronged orientation program for all new employees: a special session on the first day of work; a group session sometime during the first three months of employment; and a department orientation, which occurs over a matter of months and provides a “big-picture” perspective on the individual’s responsibilities and role within the College.17 Additionally, the College encourages employees to obtain the necessary skills, training, and education to perform their jobs better or to advance to another position, and provides several opportunities to facilitate this. The tuition remission program allows employees the opportunity to take courses that relate to their job duties tuition-free. Individual departments often offer on-the-job training in certain skills, or may arrange for employees to attend a staff development course. The Office of Human Resources arranges and/or conducts staff development sessions as well. While individual offices often have their own methods for addressing quality of work life on campus,18 staff and administration are also eligible to attend off-campus professional development programs.

The College assumes that it is the responsibility of the manager to maintain expertise, and that at least some of the necessary training and development will occur within the context of professional associations; the College provides the resources necessary to support that professional growth. Orientation, development, and evaluation of employees are the responsibilities of the person’s supervisor. The Office of Human Resources helps supervisors meet that obligation through programs, consultation, and direct services. A campus-wide enhanced training program for new staff managers was developed in 2007 and is now in the process of implementation. Managers are trained on the job in a variety of ways, primarily by their own supervisors.

In 2001 the Office of the President established a process to solicit nominations of faculty and administrators who would benefit from attendance at national leadership development conferences. Each year the College usually sends employees to the Higher Education Research Seminar (HERS)

16 See http://www.ithaca.edu/its/fs_index.htm for information about these and other services for faculty.

17 See ICPM 5.2, “Staff Training and Development.”

18 See, for example, http://www.ithaca.edu/financeadministration/professionaldev.htm.

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and to the management/leadership seminars at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. The College has also supported employee participation in the American Council on Education Fellows Program and supports the participation of senior staff managers in national professional organizations and conferences.

The Office of Human Resources also developed and supports a nationally recognized leadership program, called “LeaderShip,” that facilitates enhancement of leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving abilities in its participants.19 All except one of the vice presidents, several of the deans, and many staff managers have participated in the program, which is open to all College employees.

“LeaderShip” is designed to improve the overall quality of management and leadership on campus by addressing critical skills that lead to reflective self-assessment and build healthy relationships with others.20 Participation in the year-long program requires application by the employee and approval of the supervisor. The LeaderShip program has become an especially important development program for the College, since it offers specific tools to help create a community of professionals engaged in a common purpose. However, since the program’s schedule requires attendance at one or two day-long seminars each month, thus cutting across most teaching schedules, only one faculty member has been able to participate to date.

Staffing Needs

The College effectively tracks student demand and degree-program enrollments in order to anticipate and meet the staffing needs of each planning unit. While the College’s faculty rank data confirms its commitment to the institution of tenure, its staffing policies also provide sufficient flexibility to allow each program to meet the normal fluctuations in student demand from year to year through the hiring of part-time or term appointments. In addition, its staffing policies require a thorough review of each unit’s staffing plan at least once every two years, with clear and explicit steps that must be taken should reallocation of resources or reassignment of duties be deemed necessary.

Staffing Plans

All faculty at the College are appointed to a planning unit, each of which has a staffing plan that lists all teaching positions by rank, with a description of each position. Each unit’s staffing plan is reviewed at least once every two years to ensure that it continues to meet the needs of the College.21

As of fall 2006, the College employed a total of 670 faculty members, 460 full-time, 210 part-time. Of those, 417 or 91% of the full-time faculty and 130 or 62% of part-time faculty possessed the doctorate or an appropriate professional or other terminal degree. An additional 40 full-time faculty and 54 part-time faculty possessed a master’s degree that was not a terminal degree; and three full-time and 21 part-time faculty possessed a bachelor’s degree. The College’s faculty evaluation process includes confirmation that a faculty member at the point of formal evaluation has made substantial progress toward or has completed the terminal degree.

19 See http://www.ithaca.edu/hr/staffdev/leadership/ for further information about LeaderShip.

20 See http://www.ithaca.edu/hr/staffdev/leadership/.

21 See ICPM 4.9.7, “Planning Units and Staffing Plans.”


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The College tracks faculty teaching loads through careful annual analysis of fall full-time equivalents (FTE) relative to the total number of credit hours generated. That analysis is conducted at the departmental, school, and all-College levels, thus providing the data necessary to assess the relative efficiency with which the institution is delivering academic programming to its students. It is also the data upon which requests for additional faculty are based. For example, between fall 2002 and 2006, the School of Business generated on average 230.5 credit hours per FTE in 2002, 246.8 in 2003, 237.4 in 2004, and 226.6 in 2005, and 224.7 in 2006. Such analyses allow the school to track in the aggregate the degree to which its programs are appropriately staffed in order to meet student demand/enrollment (Office of Institutional Research). Similarly, at the all-College level, FTE/credit data provide insight into institutional staffing patterns:

2002-2003 2003-2004 2004-2005 2005-2006 2006-2007

All-college credits

190.045.0 192,980.0 187,573.0 188,264.5 187,333.5

All-college fall faculty FTE

514.5 532.9 518.7 530.8 549.6

Credits / FTE 189.8 185.8 186.7 184.1 177.0

Class sections in fall 2006, for example, ranged from 2-9 students to more than 100 (Office of Institutional Research):

Section size

2-9 10-19 20-29 30-39 40-49 50-99 100+

# of sections

309 590 440 140 43 51 16

Staffing Plans in Graduate Studies

Each graduate program has a specific and dynamic business plan that helps maintain the proper faculty team needed to deliver the curriculum. These plans also allow for the regular review of student enrollment patterns in each degree and subsequently allow for the continual review of faculty lines and loads within the graduate division. Faculty teaching lines are thus regulated within the context of business plans that include optimum student enrollment numbers in terms of both best learning and teaching practices and the faculty teaching load necessary to produce the desired learning, licensing, and career outcomes.

In the graduate division, program design and development are almost exclusively undertaken by the graduate department chairs who are either elected by their departments or selected by the school deans and are specifically chosen for their academic and professional backgrounds and experiences.

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Chairs, with assistance from the graduate division dean’s office, lead their departments through new graduate program development, curricular design and implementation, and various assessment efforts. In the past three years, expert chairs in two new graduate areas at the College, Sport Management and Adolescent Education, have led significant efforts to develop these new degrees. These two chairs worked closely with the graduate division office, colleagues in their departments and schools, and with national leaders in their fields to create new master’s degrees at Ithaca. In the case of the education degree, the chair was selected and hired from a national search designed to find someone to lead the development of this new degree and department.

The teaching load shouldered by Ithaca College faculty has changed very little during the recent growth of the graduate division. In only one or two select instances have new faculty been hired specifically to teach graduate courses or been hired to replace undergraduate teaching position that had been left under-staffed through new graduate course offerings. The graduate studies program is completely self-sustaining, and each school or department must have a college-wide approved and detailed business plan stating its financial needs and how it will cover these costs. Not only do these programs cover all of their own finances, they must also realize a profit, which is then partially shared with a program’s home department under a new “revenue-sharing” formula adopted in 2006.

Part-Time Faculty

The College’s identity as a teaching institution can be seen in its commitment to a cadre of well-qualified, full-time faculty. We do, however, use part-time faculty for special needs, particularly in the professional schools when specialized knowledge is required and in Humanities and Sciences for some service courses. Our part-time faculty are carefully evaluated both at the time of hiring and during annual reviews.

The percentage of part-time faculty as a proportion of all faculty at Ithaca College is significantly lower than the national average. A 2006 study by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) reported that 48% of all instructional faculty in the United States held part-time positions at colleges and universities. Nationally, approximately 51% of business faculty, 47% of communications faculty, and 56% of faculty in “occupationally specific programs” such as Ithaca’s HSHP programs were part-time. The College’s dependence upon part-time instruction as a proportion of all FTE instruction has remained relatively steady over the past decade. In 1996 the percentage of part-time instruction as measured in terms of FTE was approximately 10% and about 14% provided by part-time instructors a decade later. It is true that the proportion of part-time instruction as measured by head count has actually increased from about 20% in 1996 to about 30% in 2006, but those figures reflect a cap in 2004 on the number of courses a part-time instructor is allowed to teach in any given semester; that limitation necessarily increased the number of part-time instructors required to cover the same number of courses. Although the percentage of part-time faculty at the College is low compared with national averages, the number of part-time faculty has increased in the last few years given two changes: 1) the CFRD program replaces faculty at part-time rates, and 2) the College now restricts the numbers of credit hours per course part-time faculty can teach (generally a 2/2 load), which means the College needs to hire more part-time faculty to cover the same number of courses. This can cause problems with office space and retention in some departments that depend on qualified part-time faculty, especially those who teach service courses.


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Graduate Faculty

As in all faculty hiring practices on campus, faculty who will teach graduate courses are selected through a careful, highly controlled and specific search process that includes clear guidelines for academic and professional qualifications. In addition, the all-College Graduate Council, including a normal review of the faculty member’s credentials and experience, must formally approve all faculty members who teach graduate classes.

Human Resource Policies and Practices

Salary Review Process

The vice president of finance and administration outlines the annual staff salary review process to all staff and faculty each year, usually through e-mail services and Intercom.22 The process ensures equitable treatment in terms of salary compensation by following these review steps. Department supervisors submit salary review recommendations to the department head, who reviews and then passes them on to the appropriate vice president. The vice presidents also review and then forward their divisional recommendations to the director of compensation and organizational design, who reviews all salary decisions for the campus. The Salary Review Committee (the vice president of finance and administration, the director of compensation and organizational design, and the director of the budget) reviews all general salary statistics and every salary recommendation that involves additional merit pay or an individual receiving less than the full general-merit increase. The president also reviews these latter salary recommendations. Over the past three years approximately 98 percent of staff received the full general-merit increase, and approximately 23% of staff received additional merit pay. The College provides its employees merit pay for strong performance in addition to general merit pay. Additionally, the College offers special merit payments to recognize efforts and accomplishments on one-time projects or special initiatives. The College has also provided stable annual salary increments, even in years where other area employers did not.

Faculty Compensation

The Office of Human Resources recommends that hiring salaries be determined by a multi-level review process. The office uses several data sources in determining the salary, including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) data for category IIA schools and faculty data from the Association of New American Colleges (ANAC) and the College and University Professional Association (CUPA). The Office of Compensation and Organizational Design studies benchmark positions at other institutions and businesses in order to set the midpoint of the current salary ranges and grade levels and reviews all compression issues for staff. Academic deans are also responsible for reviewing internal salary compression to ensure that salary offers do not create internal equity issues. Compression is part of the annual salary review process and is also addressed at other times of the year or when reorganizations are enacted. The provost, the assistant counsel and director of equal opportunity compliance, and/or the Office of Human Resources review unusual situations. The College tracks comparison of Ithaca College salaries to “peer and aspirant

22 See ICPM 5.3.2.3, “Annual Salary Review.”

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benchmarking institutions”23 and attempts to create parity. Currently, while associate professors rank fifth out of fifteen institutions, faculty with ranks of assistant professor and professor rank ninth and tenth respectively. In the fiscal years 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 the College added to the budget $151,725 for full professor increases. The College will be continuing this adjustment process with the other faculty levels in the near future. In 2002-03 the College considered providing a competitive salary increment pool as one of its institutional priorities.24

Salary levels for faculty appear to follow the market, at least for original hiring. For that reason, average salaries between schools and departments differ. Within schools and departments, and in staff ranks, as in faculty, this may result in compression—later hires may receive as much or more as comparably qualified employees hired long ago, or the latter may lag the current market. A modest cross-College pool of funds is reserved in most years to address inequities, such as compression and market inequities. The School of Health Sciences and Human Performance specifies a procedure for review of market inequity at the dean level. Merit pay review is mandated across campus, and each school sets its own policies for the review of faculty members for this purpose.

Staff Compensation Program

The College Compensation Program is managed by the Compensation and Organizational Design Department within the Office of Human Resources. The objectives of the Compensation Program, include the provision of internal equity throughout the College, the establishment of appropriate levels of pay that are competitive locally, regionally and nationally, as well as recognizing individual differences in performance.25

One of the recommendations of the Quality of Work Life study conducted in spring 2005 was the review and revision of the existing compensation structure, which had been in place since the late 1970s. 26 That existing system relied on a set of twenty-seven job grades that articulated salaries based on length of service and job performance. Responding to the recommendation, the College hired external firm Segal/Sibson to carry out a compensation study, the results of which were released to the employees of the College in January 2007. For staff salaries and merit, Segal Simpson consultants reported that salary levels are 95% of the regionally expected median level across all ranks, an indication of equitable stewardship on the part of Human Resources despite the limitations of the existing compensation structure. The new structure, adopted July 2007, has fewer, wider salary bands than the previous system, reflective of competitive market practices and designed to accommodate a range of skills and experience levels. Each band in the structure articulates a continuum of professional development related to skills and knowledge, experience, and ability of an

23 Institutions used in this study are: Loyola Marymount University, Rollins College, Butler University, Ithaca College, Loyola College, Mercer University, Rochester Institute of technology, University of Dayton, University of Evansville, University of Portland, Valparaiso University, Villanova University, Bradley University, Drake University, and Elon University.

24 See the President’s Report to the Board of Trustees, May 2003, under “Business, Administrative and Financial Affairs.”

25 See ICPM 5.3, “Compensation Program.”

26 The Quality of Work Life Report is available at http://www.ithaca.edu/president, under “Reports and Initiatives.”


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employee to handle the job independently. It is anticipated that this new system will provide for greater possibilities for career progression than the existing system, and that employees will be able to progress in their current jobs without the need to pursue a transfer or promotion to another department and/or position.

Benefits and Retirement Plan

Ithaca College offers its faculty and staff attractive benefits packages, including a choice of health care plans and retirement plans, which constitute a significant part of the total compensation package for each employee.27 Employees who work at least one thousand hours in a fiscal year in a job that is not temporary and faculty who teach a minimum of seven credit hours both semesters or a total of at least fourteen credit hours per academic year are eligible for benefits. Some benefits are prorated for employees whose annual percent of full-time is less than one hundred percent. Length of service is one factor that determines level of benefits entitlement. The College has also joined the Emeriti program, contributing approximately $150,000 for fiscal year 2006-2007 and $325,500 for 2007-2008.

Diversity Initiatives and Procedures in Hiring and Retention

The College recruits, hires, and promotes on the basis of individual qualifications and performance. It is the policy of Ithaca College that discrimination on the grounds of age, disability, marital status, national origin, race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or military status will not exist in any activity, area, or operation of the College. The Ithaca College policy statement on equal opportunity and affirmative action was issued to each department by the Office of Assistant Counsel and Equal Opportunity Compliance. A review of departmental responses to this question indicates that most schools and departments appear to adhere to the policies. The ICPM outlines guidelines regarding searches and affirmative action and affirmative action policies and procedures in selected departments.

Reward and Incentive Practices

The College currently offers employees a variety of recognition and work life enhancement programs, including the Employee Recognition Service Awards, the IC Choice Awards and the Employee Appreciation Month reward. Faculty awards include the Excellence in Teaching, Scholarship, and Service Awards. A special employee recognition luncheon is held to recognize the contributions of retirees and long-term employees. Faculty, staff, and administrators are invited to this event after the completion of ten years of service and every fifth year thereafter.

* * *

The accomplishment of significant goals of the Quality of Work Life priority of the Institutional Plan has been a major advance for Ithaca College. The new compensation structure and employee development opportunities for staff recognize and support a range of talents and skills. The Faculty Workload Project, which adjusted the balance between faculty duties of teaching and scholarship, has provided a workload environment that is sustainable and that supports academic quality. In sum, these initiatives and others have helped attract and retain the staff and faculty critical to the continued excellence of Ithaca College.

27 See ICPM 3.9, “Employee Benefits.”

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Chapter 5: Student Learning Rigorous and mission-centered student learning is the foundation of all academic programs at Ithaca College—in the disciplines, in the schools’ and divisions’ general education programs, and in related educational activities that enhance and support the College’s intellectual life.

Our vision statement provides a useful framework for understanding the range and appropriateness of academic programs at Ithaca College. It comprises three components: 1) established structural elements that are unlikely to change in the future (“residential, comprehensive college”); 2) an ongoing philosophical commitment to three essential types of student development (“fostering intellect, creativity and character”); and 3) a tradition of student-focused education (“active, student-centered learning community”). This chapter explores this range of opportunities for student learning, including those provided by collaboration between academic and student affairs in service of the “whole student.”

Educational Offerings

The current vision and mission statements reflect assumptions that have emerged based on the historical evolution of the College’s programs, creating a situation of mutual influence. For example, roots as a music conservatory resulted in an emphasis on the aesthetic and creative, and strong programs in theatre arts, cinema and photography, art history, writing.

Similarly, our long-standing comprehensive structure has resulted in a strong commitment to a liberal arts foundation in all professional programs, as well as incorporation of professional elements in programs that might be purely liberal arts at another institution. Given this tradition, the development of a strong teacher education program in liberal arts areas like history, English, mathematics, etc., was a natural fit for the College. The students in these programs have a near 100% passing rate on all teacher exams (see the Ithaca College NYS Teacher Certification Exam Results, Pass/Fail Statuses for 2005, available through Institutional Research portal). Recently, the College’s strong commitment to teacher education has resulted in a new Department of Education and the addition of three graduate programs in education.

Graduate Curricular Offerings

Graduate programs are closely aligned with the undergraduate mission of the College. Most programs have emerged as natural extensions of related undergraduate programs, in majors that require graduate degrees for professional certification and entry-level credentials, or in academic areas where graduate degrees would provide educational and professional opportunities for our own undergraduates. Graduate programs provide advanced professional preparation in education, business, communications, health sciences, sport sciences, and music.1

Current graduate programs have grown from the values and needs of undergraduate students and faculty at the College. Disciplinary experts typically drive the process necessary to design, propose, and oversee a graduate degree program. They consider national trends and best practices in graduate

1 See http://www.ithaca.edu/gradstudies/ for a full listing.

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professional education, including market demands, as well as data from current undergraduates, alumni advisors, and professional consultants.

Despite the College’s commitment to growing the graduate division, fiscal considerations have affected the pace of graduate division growth. Since graduate degree programs have traditionally been a very small part of the College’s offerings, resources have been limited for recruitment of students, support for students, and program development. In order to pursue the public commitment to growth, while not negatively impacting the overall fiscal health of the College, the Dean of the Graduate Division requested a form of revenue sharing. Specifically, it was proposed that 15% of the revenue brought to the College by graduate programs be returned to the division to assist with recruitment and support of students, faculty development, and program costs. The first net revenue review occurred at the end of 2006-07.

Growth in graduate curricula has been a direct response to the 1997 Middle States Accreditation recommendations, which included a call for graduate program expansion, and to the goal of the Institutional Plan to “strengthen and expand graduate study.” This goal has been met, with graduate enrollment increasing by over 65% in the past two years—from totals of 280 in 2004, to 441 in 20062—and the addition of several new degrees and several new graduate student support programs.

Decision Making and Academic Program Development

Although the five schools and two divisions that comprise the major academic units function cooperatively, they are, by and large, separate groups with distinct, though parallel, structures. As described, each dean is ultimately accountable for maintaining a viable mix of academic programs within his or her school, and s/he incorporates not only the values articulated in the vision/mission and vision of the faculty into his/her decisions, but also the realities of enrollment and budget constraints. Of course enrollment and budget are shared concerns across the schools, requiring constructive collaboration among the deans. Thus, the Deans’ Council is a constituent group that is highly aware of the mix of academic programs at the College. Enrollment is one of the priority areas articulated in the Institutional Plan. The Planning and Priorities Committee, composed of faculty, staff, administrators, and students from all academic units, also reviews and makes recommendations pertinent to enrollment and potentially influential in the budget process. In addition, administrators at the College, and most recently the Enrollment Planning Task Force, discuss the mix of academic programs in relation to factors such as enrollment, diversity, and academic profile, all of which are tied to the vision/mission of the College and intertwined with admissions processes, faculty and student life.

The review and approval process for any new program, whether for a degree or a certificate, starts with a program authorization form signed by the appropriate dean, provost, and president. The form includes sections for 1) Program Rationale and Planning (including enrollment projections), 2) Resources Required (including a budget), and 3) Marketing Analysis and Plan. Authorization allows the process to move forward with a full proposal development and review. Proposals for degree and non-degree programs based on undergraduate credit are reviewed and approved by the Academic Policies Committee (APC). Graduate proposals are reviewed and approved by the all-College

2 October 1 data reported externally show totals of 230 in 2004 and 381 in 2006, but those numbers do not account for summer-only and other non-academic-year enrollments, which bring graduate totals to 280 in 2004 and 441 in 2006.

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Graduate Council. After approval by the appropriate body, the full proposal is reviewed and approved by the Provost and President. In some cases, it may be decided that a proposal must also have the approval of the Board of Trustees. In most cases, NYSED requires new programs, including non-degree programs, to also be reviewed by external experts prior to a NYSED review.

Non-credit bearing programs do not require NYSED approval and are not generally reviewed or approved by APC or Graduate Council, but do require approval of the appropriate dean or chair when they involve resources of a particular school or department. The College has identified a "continuum of certificates" each being distinguished primarily by their level of student workload expectation and the assessment of student learning outcomes. Any new certificate proposal, beginning with the program authorization and continuing through the full proposal, addresses the required implementation, administration, and assessment issues related to each program, regardless of credit or non-credit status. The proposal identifies an implementation plan and ongoing administration responsibilities for each program, including staffing plan and resource allocation. The College has implemented a revenue sharing model for new certificate programs to support their ongoing delivery. Each approved program is administered under the Division of Graduate Studies and Continuing Education in conjunction with the appropriate school and/or department.

Program assessment varies based on both credit and non-credit status, as well as the connection to any external accrediting bodies. Credit-bearing non-degree programs usually rely on the same data and strategies as degree programs since the elements that make up the programs are typically the same: courses. Non-degree program offerings often follow a model that integrates degree and certificate-seeking students into the same course environment. Other non-degree program models might serve a separate stand-alone audience, but are considered a pathway to a degree program offering identical courses. Each academic unit (department or school) offering a course has defined processes for administering and analyzing student course evaluations. These evaluation data in conjunction with other assessment strategies, such as peer evaluations or self-studies, are used to improve programs and student learning experiences. Some programs have complementary or additional requirements through their connection with an external accreditation body, such as a professional association.

General Education

The need for a strong general education for all students is inherent in the College’s mission as a comprehensive college combining theory and performance, and blending liberal and professional programs of study. As the term is used at Ithaca College, general education is best conceptualized as having two distinct, but interrelated, meanings: (1) a curricular extension of the College mission that adds breadth to enhance the student’s intellectual growth, incorporates the study of values, ethics and diverse perspectives, and complements the disciplinary major; and (2) a set of essential skills and competencies.

General Education as a Curricular Extension of the College Mission

General education requirements, though called by different names in different units, exist in every program at the College. Appendix ### presents a table, with illustrative examples from programs in each of the schools and the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies. The comprehensive character of the College helps programs to realize general education goals because students move seamlessly from requirements in the major to general education courses. In some cases, students elect a focus for mandated study in a particular category (e.g., humanities, sociology, natural science, philosophy, writing). In others, appropriate foundational courses in the liberal arts

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are built directly into the curricular plan for students in the professional schools (e.g., first-year business students take micro- and macro-economics; first-year students in HSHP programs take designated biology courses; Music Education students take educational psychology). In still others, disciplinary experts in the student’s major consult with colleagues in an identified area to narrow the list of choices, while still allowing students some discretion (e.g., “statistics” is required for those in exercise science, but a number of disciplines offer such courses).

Ample data from alumni indicate that the Ithaca College experience enhances an undergraduate’s general education, particularly as related to (1) the breadth of understanding necessary for lifelong learning, (2) appreciation of values and ethics and, to a lesser degree, diversity.

General Education as a Set of Essential Skills and Competencies

General education requirements at the College are designed by the faculty experts who are most knowledgeable about which skills and proficiencies are appropriate to the various disciplines and how best to integrate these skills and proficiencies with major requirements. Across academic programs, curricular requirements are included to ensure that students acquire and demonstrate essential skills, including (but not limited to) critical thinking, quantitative and scientific reasoning, technological competency, oral communication, and written communication. In some cases, skill development is acquired and demonstrated in a particular required course; in others, skill development takes place over several curricular experiences.

All major programs require general education courses to develop essential skills needed for success in the students’ major coursework. Coursework in academic writing, for example, is required in almost all major programs spanning the various schools (e.g., Occupational Therapy in HSHP, Journalism in Communications, Culture and Communication in the DIIS, and all majors in Business and H&S). Students are expected to complete the general education curriculum in academic writing early in their programs as preparation for more advanced coursework. In Humanities and Sciences, seats are reserved for all first-year students in the appropriate writing course. Should students fail to be identified as “writing effective” after the initial course, they can enroll in additional writing coursework or work with department faculty to demonstrate writing effectiveness through applied papers within the major.

Many programs rely on general education coursework to provide a foundation in mathematics, oral communication, critical thinking and other abilities necessary to fulfill major requirements. In some cases, faculty who teach advanced major courses work closely with faculty who teach fundamental skills to ensure that students are meeting expectations of both. For example, faculty members from the School of Business are currently collaborating with faculty from the Department of Speech Communication in an effort to identify how skills learned in business and professional communication (a general education requirement) should be applied when students are making lengthy presentations in advanced business courses. Experts from speech communication are visiting advanced classes and offering sample critiques. Through this collaboration, the business and communication faculty will develop a grading rubric for advanced business presentations. This example demonstrates the potential for application of skills learned in another unit to major coursework. Since general education requirements are created and evaluated using a decentralized process, planning units will vary as to how they expect skills to carryover into other coursework and/or field experiences.

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Library and Information Literacy

The College Library has initiated a strong information literacy program with differing degrees of implementation across the schools and departments. Progress has been consistent and seems likely to continue the momentum built to date. The library has structured its staff by school, providing specialized and knowledgeable liaisons to each school and, in some cases, departments within the schools. Liaisons provide outreach services including in-class presentations, teaching modules (including on-line), dynamic on-line guides, and interaction with students. The library also provides a recently redesigned website allowing access to electronic databases both on- and off-campus. Users can identify appropriate databases by means of title, discipline, and/or journal/media vehicle.

A couple of years ago, the College Librarian launched an information literacy initiative. Since 2004, the initiative has moved steadily forward, with considerable progress in some schools, less in others. Working with faculty, liaison librarians have developed a template that includes a list of information literacy skills appropriate to the discipline, pre-test to evaluate student skill levels, targeted assignments in specific classes, and assessment, implementation of which has begun.

In terms of information use, the Library website provides extensive guidance to students concerning proper citation and ethical use of information resources. Citation guidelines for APA, MLA, Chicago, and other formats are readily available to students. The website also provides information concerning plagiarism and evaluating the quality of information found on the Internet. The College’s policy on plagiarism is clearly set out in the Catalog and the Student Conduct Code in the Student Handbook.

Partnerships

Ithaca College partners with other organizations to enrich and diversify the Ithaca College experience. The development of partnerships involves faculty members, deans, other high-level administrators, representatives from the community partner organization, and (in some cases) IC students. The Division of Legal Affairs reviews all formal agreements (those which involved a contract or memorandum of agreement), which assures protection for the College and clear delineation of responsibility. Contracts and memoranda of understanding address, at the very least, obligations of both parties, governance and administration and insurance and liability issues.

The College’s partners include the Longview residential facility for older adults; The Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School; University of Rochester Medical Center/Strong Memorial Hospital; and the Access to College Education (ACE) program. Less formal educational outreach partnerships exist with the Frederick Douglas Academy (FDA) public school in Harlem, Ithaca’s South Hill Elementary and Boynton Middle Schools, and Bioscience and Health Careers High School-Franklin in Rochester, NY. The partnerships with the FDA, South Hill School and Boynton Middle School, and the ACE program, were developed under the auspices of the Center for Teacher Education and are now coordinated by the Office of Educational Outreach. The Ithaca College/Longview partnership was spearheaded and is coordinated by the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute. The School of Health Services and Human Performance and Department of Physical Therapy developed agreements with University of Rochester Medical Center/Strong Memorial Hospital and most recently with the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School for the Rochester Physical Therapy program, Occupational Therapy and Health Promotion and Physical Education programs. The level of mutual programming varies among these partnerships. For example, the agreement with the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School is focused primarily on space for the Physical Therapy program, the agreement with the University of Rochester relates to

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programs’ curricular issues, and the memorandum of understanding with Longview outlines joint programmatic mission and goals as well as agreed upon opportunities for both Longview residents and IC Students.

The partnership activities align closely with the following goals stated in the Ithaca College Institutional Plan: increasing diversity (FDA, Longview, ACE), promoting student engagement in and out of the classroom (all partnerships), promoting performance-based and experiential learning opportunities (all partnerships), and promoting student commitment to service and community involvement (Longview, South Hill, FDA). Input from faculty, high-level administration, and students in the development of new partnerships and subsequent periodic review has resulted in programs that align closely with the goals of the College.

Additional Instructional Sites

Ithaca College has additional instructional sites in four London, Los Angeles, Washington, and Rochester. Development is underway to solidify an Ithaca College presence in Antigua. The London, Los Angeles, and Washington programs are open to undergraduates with selection based on application review, while the Rochester site serves as the instructional base for students in the final semesters of the Occupational and Physical Therapy programs.

The curriculum offered at each additional instructional site is designed to dovetail with multiple on-campus curricula by (1) offering learning opportunities related to the site itself which are not available on the home campus and (2) linking learning opportunities to the College mission, priorities and goals, as well as the student’s on-site program. Core courses typically emphasize local architecture (e.g., Art and Architecture of Washington, British Art and Architecture) and local issues (e.g., The Media and the Military, British Youth Culture, The Film Industry). These courses incorporate student-centered learning through self reflection and cultural comparisons and experiential learning with frequent field trips and outings. Student-centered pedagogy is an important element of the College mission, and experiential learning is prioritized in the Ithaca College Institutional Plan.

Both the Los Angeles and Washington programs were specifically designed to complement on-campus curricula with an intensive internship in a career placement closely related to the student’s major. A six-credit internship is the centerpiece of both the Los Angeles and Washington curricula, with classroom experiences (typically related to the site itself) scheduled in the evenings or on weekends. A program director, who lives and works in the city and has established ties to local sites, oversees the internship placements.

Online Courses

Online courses at Ithaca College have constituted a small proportion of the College’s course offerings with a high point of 12 offered in the summer of 2006. Review of these courses follows the College’s standard process for curriculum review. Typically, online undergraduate and graduate courses have already received curriculum approval through the department, school, and Academic Policies Committee (APC) process; only the pedagogy is distinctive. If an experimental course is offered online, it must go through the College’s usual approval process after it has been offered experimentally three times.

As part of a new initiative to enhance online learning, certificate, and professional programs, the College recently hired a Director of Online Learning, Certificate, and Professional Programs who reports to the Dean of Graduate Studies. The strategic plan developed through this new office calls

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for 15 summer courses and 15 winter courses online by 2009 and 10 certificate and professional programs offered by 2009. The plan also outlines the challenges, needs, and actions related to online learning at the College.

An Online Learning Advisory Group (OLAG) has been constituted to ensure that courses provide comparable experiences; this group will define, articulate and promote good practice relating to all aspects of online learning. OLAG represents constituencies across campus and is responsible for developing the online course evaluation process.

Any credit-bearing online course at the College goes through the same process of review and evaluation. Graduate courses, including those offered online, are developed and approved at the department and school level, then reviewed by the all-College Graduate Council, passing eventually to the provost, president, and Board of Trustees, then to the New York State Education Department. Any graduate online course that is not offered for credit is developed and approved at the department level, by the appropriate dean, by the all-College Online Learning Advisory Group, and by the provost. Currently, there are about ten no-credit online courses at Ithaca, with eight of those contained with the Business Communications Certificate Program.

Every course, whether it is for credit or not, is subject to student evaluations after every offering. Both the course and faculty member teaching the course are evaluated. These evaluations are reviewed by the school dean, graduate dean, and the online learning director.

Internships and Externships

Numerous internships and external placements are available to students at the College, school, and department levels, as well as off-campus centers. Examples at the College level include the Dana Student Internship Program that provides financial support for students to work with faculty on special projects or in the local community with not-for-profit organizations, and Emerson Internships for a summer experience in a domestic or international setting. The School of Business offers internships with business organizations that allow students to apply their knowledge and skills to real-world business operations, and the Gerontology Institute offers similar experiences at facilities for older adults. The departments in the School of Health Sciences and Human Performance that offer degree programs for clinical practice require internships at clinical facilities within the curriculum. Internships are an integral component of the Washington Semester Program and exist in a variety of areas such as government, arts, museums, news, sports, writing, and education.

Scholarship Activities of Undergraduate and Graduate Students

The College provides a wide variety of opportunities for undergraduates to participate in scholarly/professional activities. Support for these activities includes (but is not limited to): (1) faculty collaboration and encouragement; (2) establishment of on-campus events and publications to highlight student accomplishments; and (3) funding for research and travel to professional meetings. The mission of the College emphasizes professional excellence for all members of the campus community and student involvement. The low student-faculty ratio at the College and the willingness of the College to encourage, support, and showcase student achievements, both on and off campus, together result in an impressive and sustained record of undergraduate student scholarship. Examples of faculty-student collaboration can be found in virtually every discipline.

The annual James J. Whalen Academic Symposium celebrates the tradition of student and faculty collaboration in research and creative activity at Ithaca College and the continuing support that

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President Whalen provided for this work during his presidency from 1975 to 1997. The Symposium affords students the opportunity to give oral presentations on their senior and honors thesis projects and independent research, and to present their original creative work in the arts, including music, theater, film, and two- and three-dimensional art. Attended by students, faculty, and the larger community, the Symposium is a high point in the academic year. The 2007 symposium involved over 200 students in more than 130 presentations. The projects represent the examples of the best student work accomplished at the College and are evidence of the important role that student-faculty collaboration plays in learning at Ithaca.

Scholarly involvement is central to the advanced preparation inherent in graduate study and is integrated into the curricular design of all programs. Students may or may not be required to complete a graduate thesis as part of their program. A limited number of graduate assistantships, supporting almost a quarter of the graduate population, are awarded each year, allowing students to become involved in research and/or teaching within the field. A graduate colloquium was established in 1998 to provide a structured celebration of graduate scholarship. Students from all programs attend and present. In addition, plans are currently under discussion to publish a journal of graduate scholarship.

Graduate students are encouraged to participate in professional conferences, but funding for these events, while occasionally supported by the Office of the Provost, has been limited in the past. The Dean of Graduate Studies identified funding for conference travel as one of several potential uses for the revenue sharing distribution expected at the end of 2007.

New Learning Initiatives

Division of International and Interdisciplinary Studies

Realizing the existence of inherent structural barriers to interdisciplinary programs, while embracing the value of interdisciplinary thinking for our students and faculty, the College set as a goal to “establish an administrative entity to encourage development and promotion of interdisciplinary programs and to supervise interdisciplinary study.”3 In 2002, the creation of the Division of Interdisciplinary Studies was approved; following additional review and reorganization, it became the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies (DIIS) in 2003. A task force formed by the president brought together constituents from across the College’s standing academic units to review the mix of programs offered and programs on the horizon (e.g., Legal Studies, Culture and Communication, Aging Studies, Classical Studies). The DIIS now offers three degree programs, along with a number of minors, and provides a structure for future interdisciplinary innovation.

The Ithaca Experience

The Ithaca Experience is defined as the rich learning experience that distinguishes the Ithaca College student, and includes a comprehensive first year experience, excellence in the major course of study leading to a capstone experience, and an exemplarily varied set of opportunities for leadership and engagement along the way. It is about the “whole student”: all activities in and out of the classroom work together to engage students across various spectra, blending theory and practice; professional and liberal education; and, in the words of our mission, intellectual growth, aesthetic appreciation, and character development.

3 See the discussion of the priorities of the Institutional Plan, in Chapter 1, above.

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The conception of the Ithaca Experience grew out of the work of the Core Experience Task Force, which proposed six, shared experiences for all students:

• New Student Orientation

• The Ithaca Seminar

• The IC Residential Seminar

• Aesthetic Appreciation Experience

• Capstone

• Learning Portfolio

After fully exploring and considering the task force report and implementation plans that grew from it, the Deans’ Council made recommendations on each of the task force’s proposals. Going forward, the institution will focus its attention on the core attributes as being delivered through the diverse components of the Ithaca Experience. Specifically, we shall:

• Continue the development of aesthetic appreciation as a core attribute.

• Ensure that New Student Orientation and the Ithaca Seminar continue as part of first year experience.

• Establish the expectation of all first-year students to participate in the Ithaca Seminar, stopping short, however, of being made a graduation requirement.

• Explore requiring Capstones for each academic program.

• Make available the learning portfolio, intended to be used as a reflective tool, to all students.

• Continue to support the concept of requiring a first year living and learning community for all freshman as an integral component of the first year experience.

Current plans call for the Provost’s Office to develop a comprehensive assessment plan to examine the extent to which proposed new initiatives address expected learning outcomes and result in continuous improvement of each initiative.

The First Year Experience

The First Year Experience is an institutional initiative that utilizes a student-centered approach designed to foster learning and achievement inside and outside of the classroom. This approach incorporates both academic and personal dimensions of student development and provides seamless Academic and Student Affairs programs and services. Such an approach is designed to cultivate students’ self-directed learning through their engagement in the College community. Through active community membership inside and outside the classroom, students will learn to value diversity of ideas, cultures, and experiences and will acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for a commitment to citizenship and service.

Ithaca College recognizes the need to strengthen student connection to the College during the first year and to lay the foundation for student success throughout the four years of student progress towards the degree. That foundation is both academic and developmental, that is, student success depends upon access to academic services when needed and upon the ability of the student to engage meaningfully in the life of the College. The first-year student who is constructively engaged is

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likely to have an academically rewarding experience at the College and, therefore, is more likely to persist to graduation.

The various programs that focus on the first year student have been brought together in order to create a coherent experience for all incoming students. These programs were previously freestanding without any common vision, planning, implementation, or assessment. Under the leadership of the recently created roles of Dean and Assistant Dean of the First Year Experience, the First Year Experience Coordinating Committee (FYECC) is now the common administrative structure for these programs.

Academic Affairs/Student Affairs Collaboration

The First Year Experience Coordinating Committee

Following the lead of Learning Reconsidered and its “new understanding of students and learning,” Ithaca College has been seeking ways to integrate academic learning and student development in service of the whole student. These efforts have culminated in the development of an institutional model that is built on the explicit and systematic collaboration of professionals from both student and academic affairs.

Prior to this movement toward collaboration, the divisions of academic and student affairs coexisted on campus. The first steps were made building upon positive personal relationships where they existed. The relationship between the vice presidents, who lead the divisions, led to the creation of a task force on student and academic affairs collaboration. This task force was charged with identifying the most promising opportunities to promote student and academic affairs collaboration on our campus. Through this phase of development, trusting relationships were built through improved communication, and a growing awareness of the importance of academic and student affairs collaboration was established.

The next step was to institutionalize these gains through the creation of a standing College Committee, the First Year Experience Coordinating Committee (FYECC). With representation from academic affairs, student affairs and the student body, the committee seeks to build a coherent first year experience, not just as a collection of disparate activities. Moreover, by virtue of its inclusivity and success, the committee has demonstrated the power of this collaboration to the entire community.

In support—and extension—of the work of the committee, offices in academic affairs and students affairs were restructured and realigned to create a new organizational model. This new organizational model is one founded explicitly on collaboration, not just coordination.

Student Engagement

While units of the College have long promoted student involvement in co-curricular experience, and closely monitored student experiences, the need for a more centralized approach to student involvement led to the creation of the Center for Student Leadership and Involvement (CSLI) in 2002, restructured in 2007 within the Office of Student Engagement.4 The CSLI strives to “develop experiences outside the classroom that will allow personal growth and development in students

4 See http://www.ithaca.edu/csli/ for more information.

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through active participation in the greater educational community.” Co-curricular experiences are most often associated with student organizations. The College has a large number of sanctioned student organizations.5 These organizations may be roughly divided into two types:

(1) disciplinary co-curricular organizations have close ties to a particular academic program, are typically populated by students from the academic program, have an advisor associated with a related discipline, and are overseen/advised and partially funded through approval of administrators in a related academic planning unit.

(2) student-community organizations have less distinct ties to a particular discipline but contribute to broader educational goals relevant to the mission, are typically populated by students with common interests (not necessarily related to their major or minor program), have an advisor who supports the students’ goals, and are overseen/advised/funded through approval by the Student Government Association and the Center for Student Leadership.

Co-curricular activities provide a constructive environment for student activism, sports/recreation participation, intellectual discussion, and exploration of new and diverse views—all of which contribute to the College mission and help to develop lifelong learners.

Formal approval of a student group at the College requires completion of a rigorous application process.6 Forming a recognized student group emphasizes critical thinking, ability to collaborate, and effective writing/speaking—all of which are among the general education skills valued across the College. Since most organizations also engage in fundraising and manage their own budgets, quantitative skills are further needed to maintain student groups. The faculty advisor of each student organization plays a critical role in ensuring that students utilize and develop general skills central to the co-curricular process. The CSLI strongly encourages advisors to (1) “encourage and assist the members in making programs purposeful and meaningful for their target audience through organized planning, facilitating, and evaluating their programs,” (2) “assist in educating the members about group dynamics, different learning and leadership styles, organizational structure, diversity, programming, assessment, and collaboration,” (3) “teach members goal setting and team building strategies,” (4) ‘act as a role model of positive, constructive citizenship.” All these goals connect to the mission of the College, providing co-curricular learning that develops character, encourages intellectual growth, and promotes citizenship.

Residential Learning Opportunities and Programs

The College’s approach to achieving excellence for residential colleges emphasizes programming that enhances the educational experience by creating opportunities for growth and development and inspiring a sense of community. To meet these goals, residence life professionals, in concert with student resident assistants and IC faculty, design programs around specific learning outcomes for specific groups of residents. Moreover, the philosophy of programming is heavily reliant on input from the residents themselves.

The Office of Residential Life and Judicial Affairs recently implemented a new programming model, the Diamond Model. This model involves a total of eight “programming events” per semester focused on experiential learning, diversity, community development, and wellness, all elements that

5 See Appendix ### for a full list.

6 See the “Student Organization Guidebook,” available on the CSLI’s website.

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respond to the educational needs and interests of Ithaca College residents. Student learning outcomes related to building community, appreciating diversity, and employing critical thinking (among others) are targeted in residential life programming. Residents, residence assistants, and the staff in residence life use the student feedback to evaluate and improve programs, as well as to provide models for future programming. Since overall retention and satisfaction rates among first-year students are higher when student live in first-year residence halls, discussions are now underway to expand the space dedicated to first-year students. The recent search for a first-year specialist in the Office of Academic Enrichment Services is evidence that the College is responsive to demonstrated student need.

The College has implemented focused learning programs/initiatives under two general categories: learning communities and additional opportunities for special housing. Learning communities are distinctive residentially based educational programs with (1) faculty advisors, (2) specifically articulated learning outcomes, and (3) specialized programming models. Examples of Ithaca’s learning communities include the Humanities and Sciences “Honors Floor,” the Housing Offering Multicultural Experience (HOME) program, VECINOS (Hispanic Language and Culture Experience Community), a sustainability-based group, and others. Other specialized housing includes the First-Year Residence Hall Program and apartment housing, both designed to address the needs of specific populations. While neither serve as learning communities, per se, they both offer support related to specific residential goals as established by Residential Life. Assessment of all such programs, including specific learning communities is well established and ongoing.

* * *

While many institutions see themselves as “student-centered,” Ithaca College strives to be an “active, student-centered learning community,” one in which all members of the community contribute to the learning process. That and the comprehensive nature of the College provide an environment that supports intellectual inquiry, both in and out of the discipline—and classroom—and that fosters lifelong learning and community engagement. Innovations in support of this mission include the elements of the First Year Experience; work continues on additional components of the “Ithaca Experience,” including a proposed capstone requirement and all-College Honors. Other significant academic initiatives include the inauguration of new graduate programs and the creation of the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies.

But perhaps the most important change on campus in support of student learning has been the solidification of a culture of planning on campus, and in turn the beginnings of a culture of assessment.

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Chapter 6: Assessment Ithaca College is committed to developing and maintaining a “culture of assessment” that establishes mission-centered student learning and institutional outcomes, that measures progress toward achieving those goals, and that ensures continuous improvement in program quality throughout the College.

This chapter demonstrates our commitment to establishing a culture of assessment at Ithaca College, and our progress thus far, beginning with processes for institutional assessment, and moving to the assessment of student learning. We return to many of the planning activities outlined in Chapter 1, and build upon the discussion in the intervening chapters.

Institutional Assessment Processes

External Accreditation and Evaluation

As with all institutions of higher education, the operations of several units at the College are affected by external mandates. Several units are accredited by various professional associations or agencies, such as the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, National Associations of Schools of Music, National Association of Schools of Theatre. Several of the applied academic programs, such as Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, and Teacher Education adhere to professional agency guidelines in terms of curricula and learning outcomes, and use these criteria to address program compliance and to assess program effectiveness (e.g. OT, PT, and Teacher Education). Academic programs and the curriculum must meet New York State Education Department requirements, including review processes for any revisions and additions. Each of these processes provides valuable external evaluation of the performance of the units in achieving their professional and student learning goals. These external evaluations are regularly used in the planning for future activities in those units, or in support of requests for funding, staffing, or other resources.

On the operational side, the College’s effectiveness in adhering to various standards and requirements is externally and internally evaluated. Two examples are the annual food safety audit performed by Sodexho, the College’s contract provider of dining and catering services, and the College’s own ongoing monitoring of risk management in campus operations such as environmental safety, athletic operations, co-curricular activities, and campus outings. Recent changes made as a result of these evaluations include a move to smaller group vehicles to provide safer transportation of student groups, requiring students driving college vehicles to take a driver safety class, and ensuring that athletic coaches are certified in AED and CPR.

Additionally, the Office of Finance and Administration uses external financial standards as benchmarks for the College’s financial operations. The Finance Unit is externally reviewed through the annual audit process, a system characterized as “realistic and systematic.” The Office of Finance and Administration also utilizes external measurements for its physical plant.1

Several of the schools, including the Park School of Communications and the School of Business, have established external advisory boards that provide valuable insight from the professional community as well as a monitor on the performance of graduates from the programs.

1 See information on SightLines in Chapter 1.

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Additionally, the College continuously engages in benchmarking and comparisons to peer and aspirant institutions, with the annual Peer and Aspirant Benchmarking report being a notable example.

The Planning and Priorities Committee and the Institutional Plan

While external evaluations provide important information, the College’s primary indicator of institutional effectiveness is the degree to which it achieves the goals set forth in the Institutional Plan, which has been described at length in Chapter 1, above.

The All-College Planning and Priorities Committee, which has responsibility for the Institutional Plan, collects summaries of the collective accomplishments of the campus in implementing the priorities and goals of the Plan. For instance, Goal 2 of the Institutional Plan is “Enhance campus residential life to position the College as a national model for living/learning environments.” Under this goal, one implementation strategy is to “assess student interest in smoke-free residence halls and …substance-free housing.” This evaluation was carried out: The College now offers more substance-free housing, and all housing is smoke-free. Additionally, each year the president and the vice presidents retreat to review the past year, analyze current trends, and discuss areas to focus on from the Institutional Plan. Each vice president sets annual goals and objectives that are linked to the Institutional Plan. In conjunction with the President’s Council, the Committee selects annual Areas of Focus from the Plan. For example, the Areas of Focus for fiscal years 2006 and 2007 involve continuing to improve the quality of the student experience (in academic and co-curricular arenas) with important work in areas such as facilities, resource development, quality of work life for employees, diversity, and information technology, all of which support quality improvement for the College. Already identified for 2008, one area of focus will be the development of student enrollment and retention strategies for 2009 and beyond, given regional demographic projections. Examples of progress in meeting the Plan’s goals and priorities include the following:

• Academic Program Development: successful accreditation for the School of Business by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business; development, adoption of, and creation of an implementation plan for the recommendations of the Core Experience Task Force; establishment of a First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee to enrich the learning environment for students.

• Diversity: enrolled highest percentage in the College’s history of U.S. residents who are students of color as full-time freshman in the fall of 2006.

• Facilities: renovated Garden Apartments student residence; established classroom renovation program as an annual recurring item in the capital budget. Created the College Circle Apartments.

• Quality of Student Life: reorganized key areas of Student Affairs and Academic Affairs to enhance student engagement, student success, and student retention. The reorganization was prompted by two vacancies that led to reflection by key people and benchmarking via a review of peer institution organizational structures.

• Quality of Work Life: conducted Quality of Work Life Assessment with staff and administration and began implementation of recommendations including a review of compensation, workload, hiring processes, and position descriptions. The Faculty Workload Project provided opportunity for academic departments to assess and revise their operations to enhance academic excellence.

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• Resource Development: concluded Phase I of the Web Infrastructure and Branding Initiative, including an upgrade of the College’s primary web presence and revamping of the online recruitment sites for the Office of Admission. The College also initiated the comprehensive campaign and now is moving toward its completion.

• Technology: implemented Phase I of the new student information system; Implemented a Classroom Technology Renewal Program to provide all classrooms with a baseline set of computer hardware.

Academic Program Review

As a first attempt at establishing a widespread culture of assessment, the institution of academic program review can be viewed as a successful point in our evolution.2 Among other topics, departments were challenged to identify alignments with college and school missions, student learning outcomes, assessment measures, and action plans based on assessment, including evaluation by outside consultants. As might be expected with a first attempt, specific methodologies, formats, and results vary quite widely across departments, although many serve as exemplary models for the College as we proceed toward a refinement and reiteration of the process. By focusing on program strengths and weaknesses through the use of both internal study and external review teams, departments can enhance quality and/or address problems. Information gathered through assessment has been used for planning the future direction of academic departments and programs. To bring focus to program review and assessment the College mandated that departments use the mission statement and goals set forth in the Institutional Plan as the basis for individual program review and assessment projects.

Program review documents articulate student learning objectives and methods for achieving those objectives, including curricula, syllabi, and examinations. In addition, alumni are surveyed and external examiners are called in to evaluate the department. Often, comparable and aspirant departments at other institutions are surveyed. The “action plan” portion of the planning and assessment process ensures feedback into the operation of the department. The process is continuous in that updates are required annually. In addition, the full review process is conducted every five years. The entire department takes part in the process.

The College provided two courses release time for departments for this project and paid for external evaluators. Some schools, in particular Business and Communications, have created positions in the dean’s office that are charged with supporting faculty in assessing student learning. Programs that require accreditation devote substantial resources to assessment, perhaps most notably the School of Business, which received AACSB accreditation in 2005.

The Office of Institutional Research provides information to departments that request data regarding courses, enrollments, grade distributions and other numerical information that can be used as an adjunct to departmental assessments of student learning.

2 For a discussion of the process of academic program review, as well as its place in institutional planning, see Chapter 1, above.

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Other Initiatives and Assessment

Sustainability

While the term “sustainability” does not appear in the original institutional plan, since 2004, the campus has accepted its responsibility to become more sustainable, and the language and actions of sustainable development have begun to be integrated into the institutional planning and progress reporting.

The campus has consistently measured its progress toward this goal through a number of means, including a series of campus updates issued by the Provost’s office, regular reports to the Board of Trustees (as part of the Academic Affairs report).

The first steps in adhering to the recently signed Talloires Declaration have been creation of a committee that will evaluate the degree to which the campus currently achieves the Declaration’s goals, and create a plan to achieve new levels of sustainability. The most recent Institutional Plan Area of Focus for 2008, issued in late fall 2006, it is a stated goal for the campus to “continue to monitor progress on commitment to the Talloires Declaration and share updates with campus.”

Diversity

Diversity has been one of the “key focus areas” within the Institutional Plan from its inception, with specific goals and objectives identified. As the earliest action toward implementation of this aspect of the newly adopted Institutional Plan, President Williams appointed a Diversity Task Force to address this institutional priority. As a result of the task force report, a Presidential Advisory Committee on Diversity was formed.

Follow-up activities included a Campus Climate Survey on diversity, and diversity training workshops for students, faculty, and staff. Institutional Plan updates on the campus progress toward achieving diversity goals and objectives include numerous references to activities and actions in furtherance of this objective.

Recommendations from the report of the Diversity Task Force include the following assessment-related activities:

• Repeat the Campus Cultural Climate Survey on a regular basis in order to assess the campus environment regarding diversity efforts and how we are supporting our ALANA students.

• Develop a similar survey for faculty and staff and implement it on a regular basis. This will provide us with a mechanism of continuous review and assessment regarding diversity and multiculturalism and will be useful to senior management and the president.

• Evaluate the effectiveness of the National Coalition Building Institute. If results are favorable, expand the number of individuals who are trained using this model.

Student Engagement and Attitudes

The College has recently engaged in a thoughtful and thorough dialog regarding student engagement information gained from the National Survey of Student Engagement. As a direct result of the information provided from the test, each academic unit has established an action plan to achieve specific engagement goals during 2007-08.

Several offices in the Division of Student Affairs and Campus Life intentionally involve students in the development of their ongoing goals and assessment of current services. A Quality of Life Survey

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is conducted biennially with students. The survey has a set of core questions and targeted questions to address current priorities. Data from this survey is shared with other campus units/key stakeholders such as Public Safety, Physical Plant, and the Resident Hall Advisors. One administrator interviewed expressed an interest in sharing more information about the process with students, with a focus on how the information gathered is used rather than on the data itself. The Director of Student Engagement and Multicultural Affairs proactively works with ALANA alumni to get their feedback on services and resources offered to ALANA students during their years at the College. Coaches of athletic teams are regularly evaluated by student athletes to determine the quality of their leadership and motivational skills (among other variables). The athletic director uses the student data, along with other factors, to assess the quality of the College’s intercollegiate athletic programs.

The survey of graduating seniors reflects student satisfaction with their education at Ithaca College, their goals in the short- and long-term, and employment prospects. Finally, the College surveys its graduates to document the extent to which Ithaca College met their needs regarding education and training for graduate and professional school and for their careers. Independently of the school’s surveys, some departments (e.g., psychology) conduct surveys of their graduates as part of departmental self-assessment. The information involves specific detail regarding the students’ majors. In addition, departments can use available data on enrollment in their courses to determine curricular and staffing needs.

Assessment of Student Learning

Institution-wide Student Learning: the Core Attributes

The Core Experience Task Force, in its first year of work, identified seven “core attributes,” or brief statements of learning goals to which all Ithaca College students would aspire by graduation. The list was derived from discussions within the task force, and tested with a variety of College constituencies. The seven attributes are

• Aesthetic Appreciation: the ability to recognize the variety of artistic expression and appreciate aesthetic perspectives and endeavors.

• Communication Skills: the ability to read, write, speak, and listen well, and the ability to use communication technology effectively.

• Competence: the development of discipline-specific knowledge and skills and the interdisciplinary linking of that knowledge to other fields.

• Critical Thinking: the ability to acquire, comprehend, analyze, and synthesize knowledge and information from print, electronic, and media sources.

• Global Citizenship: the ability to understand, appreciate, and think critically about cultural complexity, social and environmental responsibility, diversity and the development of a global perspective.

• Lifelong Learning: the development of intellectual curiosity and the research skills to pursue it.

• Personal Development: the ability to collaborate with others as peers and as leaders, resolve conflicts cooperatively, assume personal responsibility, and create and live intentionally by values/ethics.

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This list has been accepted and made public as the institution-wide student learning outcomes for the Ithaca Experience.

As noted above, work is underway to develop a comprehensive assessment plan for the Ithaca Experience; part of this effort will be to utilize measures of student achievement of these outcomes in a process of continuous improvement.

Student Learning Outcomes at the Program and Course Level: the Academic Program Review Reports

The program review process, including the annual updates, is the primary means for ensuring that learning objectives are explicitly and clearly stated and assessed. The process asks the departments to tie their learning objectives to those of the school and the College. The process ensures planning and affects teaching, curricula, and budgets.

Of special interest for this self-study is the depth to which many departments documented coherent assessment plans that include measurable student outcomes, practical and usable data, and action plans that align new objectives with student learning outcomes, outside accrediting organizations, alumni surveys, and outside evaluators. The following summary data illustrate the variety of information provided by the reports.

1. Specific learning goals identified for department and or degree: 22 of 33 departments. (Departments without such specific learning goals identify development of clearer assessment procedures in their action plans.)

2. Specific course-level learning goals: 20 of 33 departments: (Absence of learning goals in these reports often reflects general explication of departmental procedures without providing detailed data.)

3. Assessment procedures that align with learning goals: 24 of 33 departments (Discrepancy with #2 above reflects in part some departments whose reports provide more specific information regarding assessment procedures than about learning goals.)

4. Alignment of action plans with specific learning goals: 18 of 33 departments

5. Alignment of action plans with outside accrediting organization: 15 of 33 departments (This, of course, reflects the heavy concentration of professional programs at Ithaca, each of which requires accreditation by a discipline-specific organization.)

6. Alignment of action plans with recommendations by outside evaluator: 19 of 33 departments

7. Alignment of action plans with recommendations by alumni surveys: 15 of 33 departments

Since in a second iteration of the process, we anticipate enhanced alignment in the areas described above, instructions and feedback to the departments should be clarified. Although the process has only been through one cycle as yet, it has formed the beginnings of a culture of assessment at Ithaca College.

The reports demonstrate that departments have made significant progress toward identifying measurable student learning goals. Professors design their courses to achieve learning objectives; however, these objectives are not always listed in the syllabus.

The School of Humanities and Sciences has stated some very broad educational objectives in its mission statement: “An education in the School of Humanities and Sciences encourages informed citizenship, global awareness, and community involvement, preparing students to make meaningful

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contributions to society and for productive, fulfilled lives.” The General Education requirements of H&S are one way of achieving these objectives. General Education requirements have had a major impact on curricular design within the school and curricular choice for students. Departments sometimes develop specific courses with the General Education requirements in mind. Science classes for non-science majors are one example of this. In addition, departments petition to have specific courses receive General Education designations. In this way, departmental learning objectives are aligned with those of the school.

The Planning and Assessment initiative seems to have done much to advance the culture of assessment at Ithaca College. Schools and departments have missions that incorporate student learning outcomes and strive to align these goals with the mission of the College. There is much evidence that student learning outcomes are stated explicitly at the program and course levels. And there is ample evidence that departments assess their student learning objectives and affect changes to ensure them. For instance, changes in curricula can often be tied to attempts to achieve student learning objectives. Almost all this evidence is found in the departmental Planning and Assessment reports. Because of this, it is important to continue and enhance the departmental Planning and Assessment process.

One leading example of a process of learning-based pedagogy is in the School of Business. Their accrediting agency, AACSB, focused on learning objectives much earlier than Middle States, and in fact the accreditation of the Ithaca College School of Business was delayed due to weak learning objectives and assessment plan. The faculty and administration spent a year on that and the AACSB team was satisfied in its follow-up visit that the curriculum had met these goals. A major part of the curriculum plan was a chart devised by faculty, which identified the courses in their core curriculum that include learning objectives for each major area and which learning area will be assessed within that course. Since the school asked the teachers of the courses to define learning objectives and how the instructors assess student learning, faculty members have agreed upon standardized assessment at the course level. At the program level, the school uses a standardized instrument used by many AACSB-accredited institutions, the Educational Benchmarking Institute instrument.

An illustration of best practices is in the Park School, whose dean has appointed a senior faculty member as part-time associate dean in order to help departments identify competencies in degree programs and plans for meeting those. The dean has said that every syllabus must include learning objectives.

Role of the Academic Policies Committee in Student Learning Outcomes Assessment

For all programs, changes are reviewed by the Academic Policies Committee (APC) and, in the case of substantive changes in curricula or course offerings, are forwarded to the New York State Education Department for approval. In summer 2006, the process for the approval of new degree programs was revised to require assessment utilizing student learning data. A successful proposal must now include appropriate responses to the following:

• Describe the methods and criteria to be used to evaluate the academic quality and effectiveness of the proposed program.

• What specific learning outcomes will be achieved by students who complete the proposed program of study? What methods will be used to assess student learning? How will student learning assessment be embedded in the curriculum?

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• How will the institution determine the extent to which the program meets its stated goals and objectives (e.g., monitoring procedures, outcome indicators)?

• How will the collected information be used to improve teaching, advising, and co-curriculum activities to enhance student learning?

The process for the approval of revisions to programs has been similarly revised.

This fall, the APC is setting guidelines for the designation of courses as “capstones” for majors; these guidelines will include course criteria (e.g., that the course would be offered typically to seniors) and an expectation that each capstone have stated and appropriate learning objectives. The committee will judge the proposals for capstone designation by the guidelines they set. The committee will then consider making a policy that will require that all degree programs at Ithaca College culminate in a designated capstone experience.

Work toward a capstone requirement breaks new ground at the College in a number of ways, not least of which is the institution-wide requirement for the articulation of student learning outcomes in a course proposal.

Student Statements and Student Learning Outcomes Assessment

At the present time the College has approved guidelines that determine the process of capturing student evaluations of faculty teaching; however, the College does not have a common evaluative instrument, although a committee of Faculty Council and Student Government Association is considering the creation of such a tool. Currently, each department designs its own evaluation form and uses the results, along with other tools such as peer review of classroom teaching and curricular materials in the faculty review process. While student statements can offer useful information, assessment of student learning based on such materials is indirect at best, which is why peer review is a significant aspect of the assessment of faculty teaching at Ithaca College. Ithaca Seminars and H&S Honors have their own assessment tools.

New Program Development and Student Learning Outcomes Assessment

Another area currently in some flux is the General Education requirement in the School of Humanities and Sciences (Undergraduate Catalog). These requirements ensure that students take courses in a variety of disciplines and explore global and historical perspectives. The requirements have clearly stated learning objectives, and students must meet the requirements. The General Education Requirements in Humanities and Sciences are currently being revised.

The pilot Ithaca Seminar program has introduced the idea of learning goals and objectives and assessing student learning. The 20 faculty in the program were required to attend the two-day Dee Fink workshop in 2005 and the half-day follow-up in 2006. As that program moves forward, additional steps are expected. The IDEA system for student responses has been used in the pilot courses and it is designed to identify the student learning objectives of the course and the perceptions of students about their learning.

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Measuring Student Success

Certification Tests

Accreditation examinations are transparent, current, and reflect nationally or regionally established learning objectives. About 20 programs across the campus are accredited. For example, students must pass certification programs in Teacher Education (New York State Teacher Certification Examinations). The results of these accreditation examinations are made public and are usually available online. As another example, Physical Therapy students take the examination of The Federation of State Boards of Physical Therapy. The IC pass rate for 2005 National Licensing Exam for Physical Therapy was again 96%. This is the same pass rate for IC graduates taking the exam for the first time as in 2004. The IC pass rate continues to compare very favorably to New York State and national pass rate averages, which were 69% and 83% respectively. In Occupational Therapy our students take the National Board for Certification of Occupational Therapy. The pass rate on the national registration examination for first-time test takers is 97.98 percent for all program graduates from 2000 to the present. This percentage reflects scores from a total of 149 graduates; 146 passed on the first try.

Institutional Research Initiatives

Institutional Research collects a variety of statistics to assess student success by way of the Survey of Graduating Seniors, Alumni Survey (six months and one year post-grad), several academic department alumni surveys, National Survey of Student Engagement (freshman and seniors), LSAT scores, New York State Teacher Certification Exam results, and admission rates.

Institutional Research keeps records of 4-year, 5-year and 6-year graduation rates for entering students. For example, the 5-year graduation rate for entering cohorts from 1996 through 2000 has ranged from 72.4% to 75.9% with an average over these five cohorts of 74.4%. Comparing Ithaca College’s graduation rates to 14 peer and aspirant benchmarking institutions, Ithaca College’s 77% graduation rate (six-year graduation rate for the 2000 entering class) ranked fourth among the fifteen schools examined (14 peer/aspirant plus IC).

For students who elect to have their data reported to Ithaca College, LSAT scores and law school acceptances are tracked via the Office of Institutional Research. For 2005-06 law school applicants from Ithaca College, the average LSAT score was 153.3 (national average = 152.8) and 76% (71 of 94 applicants) were accepted to one or more law schools (national admission rate was 63%). Fifty-eight of these 71 reported registering at a law school. From an historical perspective, Ithaca College students have consistently been admitted to law school at rates comparable to or higher than the national average for the last 10 years.

For students who wish to become public school teachers, Ithaca College maintains records of passage for a variety of New York State tests. For the Written Elementary Assessment of Teaching Skills, Ithaca College had 441 test takers between 10/1997 and 12/2006 with a passage rate of 96%. This rate compares favorably to passage rates for students from all independent colleges in New York (N = 78,541, passage = 85%) and statewide (N = 143,257, passage = 82%) for the same period. A similar trend is found for the Written Secondary Assessment of Teaching Skills. Ithaca College students (N = 557) demonstrated a 96% passage rate between 10/1997 and 12/2006 while independent colleges (N = 37,241) and statewide (N = 79,658) passage rates were 89% and 84%, respectively, for the same period.

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The Liberal Arts and Sciences Test (LAST) is used in New York State to evaluate general knowledge and problem solving skills of potential teachers. Between 10/1997 and 12/2006, Ithaca College had 1093 students complete the LAST, with a 95% passage rate. This passage rate again compares favorably with other independent colleges (N = 135,010, passage = 76%) and statewide test takers (N = 266,569, passage rate = 72%). For the New York State Music Test, Ithaca College had a 97% passage rate for 143 test takers between 2/2004 and 12/2006. Independent colleges as a whole (N = 1042) had a 72% passage rate and statewide test takers (N = 1,830) had a 73% passage rate during the same period. Thus, Ithaca College students perform favorably compared to other students on a variety of New York State teacher education examinations.

Looking at students’ post-graduation achievements, the institution has administered to graduating seniors (in 2003 and 2005) a survey from the Higher Education Data Sharing Consortium. Questions on this survey instrument address issues such as graduate school or employment plans and the extent to which students’ Ithaca College experiences (both inside and outside of the classroom) contributed to development of intellectual and interpersonal skills. Compared to 2005 seniors from comparable institutions, Ithaca College’s 2005 seniors reported a higher percentage (51.6%) that plan to attend graduate school and who had already been accepted for graduate admission in fall 2005. Students from the four comparison groups (institutions with low and high admission rates compared to Ithaca College and institutions with small and large enrollments) had percentages varying from 23-39.6% of seniors who had been accepted to and planned to attend graduate school in fall 2005. Ithaca College students reported lower institutional contributions to their development of the following: their use of quantitative tools, reading and speaking a foreign language, understanding the process of science and experimentation, placing current problems in historical/cultural/philosophical perspective and developing self esteem than did their peers at comparable institutions (as measured by t-tests reported in Ithaca College’s HEDS data summary). Ithaca College students reported higher institutional contributions to their development of the following: use of technology, appreciation of art/literature/music/drama, awareness of social problems, understanding moral and ethical issues and leading and supervising tasks/groups of people (again as measured by t-tests reported in the Ithaca College HEDS data summary). Ithaca College seniors reported a mean overall satisfaction with their college education that was equal to the highest mean from the comparison groups of institutions.

The Office of Institutional Research administered an alumni survey in 2000, 2002 and 2004, polling students one year after graduation about their present employment or graduate study as well as their satisfaction with their experiences at Ithaca College. Over the three alumni survey administrations, the average response rate was 30%. Of those responding, an average of 85% of alumni reported being employed within one year of graduation and an average of 40% reported being enrolled in graduate programs. When asked about the degree to which Ithaca College prepared them for employment, 71% responded with a rating of 4 or 5 (1 = not at all, 5 = a great deal), indicating that most Ithaca College graduates who responded to the survey instrument felt that Ithaca College prepared them well for employment. Approximately one half of the graduate programs conduct alumni surveys and use this data to revise their programs as appropriate. A number of academic programs, as part of their review process, also survey alumni from their departments using departmentally designed questionnaires. Data from these departmental surveys are available in several departmental program review reports (e.g., Department of Art History, Department of Economics, Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences, Department of Music Education, Department of Psychology, Department of Speech Communication).

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At the College level, it may be possible to use institutional data to assess some aspects of student learning. The College uses four standardized surveys, including the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP), the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE), the Ithaca College Senior Survey, and the Ithaca College Alumni Survey. These data could provide indirect measures of learning. Because they involve self-report and because they do not measure knowledge of disciplinary information, however, the College should use these data as an adjunct to other measures. One advantage of using both CIRP and NSSE is the availability of national norms for comparison purposes.

Analysis of the NSSE data reflects that the Ithaca College compares favorably in some aspects of student learning (e.g., putting together ideas from different courses when completing assignments or during class discussion; participation on research with a faculty member outside a class; amount of assigned reading), but it also demonstrates areas of challenge in others (e.g., participating in a senior capstone experience; making a class presentation; the extent to which examinations challenged the student to do his or her best work. Throughout 2007, the deans have been working with the interim provost and our new provost to develop action plans based on NSSE data to address areas of challenge. If nothing else, these data reflect student awareness of the various aspects of college life and learning that faculty and other scholars in higher education regard as integral to a successful undergraduate experience.

Co-Curricular and Extra-Curricular Experiences

Within Student Affairs and Campus Life (SACL), for the past two-three years the agenda has been shifting to a focus on student learning. In the past, planning had been based on student satisfaction with programs. The division is looking now for ways to understand what they do in terms of student learning. Brian McAree and Terry Martinez both indicated that SACL increasingly tries to design experiences with learning objectives in mind from the outset, though SACL professionals (and faculty) may be reluctant to identify those objectives as academic. Nonetheless, SACL staff work with students who are involved in campus activities and organizations, and help students to identify the kinds of skills that they are developing and practicing through their involvement in different activities, so that students can be intentional about their personal and professional growth as they master such skills. Student organizations are viewed in particular as vehicles for students to develop their organizational and leadership skills, important academic objectives.

At the moment, there is no formal assessment mechanism through which students can document such skills development and mastery. However, SACL does ask students to complete surveys evaluating their programs, and increasingly these questions measure student learning in addition to satisfaction.

A Quality of Life Survey is conducted every other year with students to measure the impact of programming and services. The survey has core questions and a set of targeted questions that address current priorities. They also conduct focus groups with students. A summary of assessment plan advances is developed every two years. In the intervening years, an executive summary is prepared. Work on a comprehensive assessment plan was started two years ago, which is working to link position descriptions and duties to the plan. Every other year, data from the National Education Benchmarking Survey is used to compare IC to six peers and other Carnegie class institutions (in off years for the Quality of Life Survey). An example of modification of programming in response to assessment is that we no longer have resident assistants work on community standards initiatives because data from the Quality of Life Survey indicated no lasting effect of this initiative.

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October 1, 2007

Another way co-curricular assessment links to student academic success is through RA exit interviews. RAs report positive links to time management and general prioritization skills. The RAs indicate they gain a skill set that will be valuable for their post-college roles. The Quality of Life Survey gives students the opportunity to self-report on diversity skill development. The First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee is also looking at student success and asking questions such as, what content do we need to meet identified outcomes?” and “how should services (e.g. residential housing) be organized in order to deliver programming effectively?”

* * *

Formal academic assessment is relatively new for Ithaca College. Certainly faculty have for years evaluated teaching, the curriculum, and qualifications and performance for tenure, promotion, and merit pay. However, systematic, “close-the-loop” assessment began here in 1999 with the development of the Institutional Plan. The College now has developed an iterative assessment process and schedule and will soon adopt methodologies to evaluate these assessments more completely and efficiently to offer us the best information to promote institutional renewal.

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Conclusion

As this self-study has demonstrated, Ithaca College has changed in significant ways in the last 10 years.

The effects of the seven key initiatives, which both arose out of the Plan and helped to shape its implementation, can be seen in the curriculum, the physical plant, the College’s financial and human resources, the culture of planning that has been fostered, and the bedrock values of community and sustainability that we work to infuse in all our operations.

Some of these changes have been partly in response to the recommendations Middle States provided in its 1997 and periodic (2002) reports. We have created and lived by an Institutional Plan; addressed governance issues by revising our Faculty Handbook and inviting faculty and staff representation on the Planning and Priorities Committee and other all-College committees, including the Budget Committee; reviewed and updated our tenure and promotions guidelines; created an Institutional Plan that is 1) linked to budgetary decisions and 2) provides annual accountability; created shared educational experiences for our students; and completed program assessment and review.

But even more important has been the establishment of a collective unity of purpose that arose as a result of the growth of community, shared governance, and sustainability made possible by the vision and efforts of our President, Peggy R. Williams. This unity of purpose has enabled us to launch our complex initiatives successfully and relatively quickly. We, therefore, welcome the larger purpose of this self-study (beyond the obvious goal of accreditation)—institutional improvement, and of course, the Middle States self-study process itself can generate institutional reflection that can initiate positive change.

We also are aware that some of our accomplishments are “in process,” that is, we have begun processes that will take some time to more fully execute. In fact, five areas surfaced where the Self-Study Steering Committee believes improvement would benefit our ongoing success as an institution. Analysis of the first two areas—assessment and general education—have led to specific recommendations that will address issues of compliance with Middle States standards, while the others—advising, faculty and staff development, and governance and administration—are included in a general recommendation regarding the College’s upcoming reiteration of the planning process.

Recommendations

1. Assessment

The self-study reveals many noteworthy examples of assessment campus-wide, demonstrating that the College has progressed well toward establishing a data-driven institutional culture based on efforts to enhance our academic and institutional success. As an essential next step toward developing an authentic “culture of assessment,” this self-study recommends that the College explore means of centralizing and systematizing administrative aspects of assessment processes, building upon the successes demonstrated in units throughout the campus. While assessment of student learning and institutional effectiveness must be accomplished by and within departments and divisions, administrative overview is critical to provide 1) resources and support, 2) linkage among the schools, divisions, offices, and College, and 3) coordination of initiatives to enhance institutional effectiveness.

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The following activities related to assessment should be facilitated for all programs/units:

• Develop resource plan to ensure financial and staffing support for assessment processes.

• Mandate student-learning outcomes as required components of new Academic Policies Committee-approved and graduate-level courses. Add student learning outcomes to existing syllabi.

• Align institutional and unit-specific goals, including student learning outcomes and core attributes.

• Develop calendar (schedule of assessment-related activities).

• Focus on links to planning and budgeting for institutional priorities, including reallocation.

• Extend best practices (assessment instruments, processes, and administrative models) campus-wide to include all units/activities, including partnerships, internships, and external sites.

• Ensure staffing, administrative, and financial resources to support assessment processes, including training, development, implementation, and feedback procedures.

• Develop authentic feedback processes to ensure that we “close the loop,” including clearly-articulated reporting procedures that reflect data and how it is utilized.

Again, we reiterate that elements of all of these activities exist, at least in part, in units throughout the College, and we think that many provide exemplary models for enhancement of the College’s assessment efforts. In fact, measures have already been initiated during this academic year, under the leadership of our new provost, regarding our commitment to developing authentic, institution-wide assessment. Implementation of a pilot program using the “Weave” software program should provide the campus with experience that will inform our systematizing of assessment processes. Such a systematic and centralized approach should ensure an appropriate level of consistency and compliance College-wide, thus enhancing the effectiveness of the entire College, not just some of its standout units.

2. General Education

The College should institute a review of general education programs campus-wide, (1) ensuring alignment with an approved set of core attributes and 2) evaluating skills development in general education offerings. This review should articulate and assess learning outcomes related to general education, should involve widespread participation, and should be used to improve general education across the College. As with issues related to institutional and student learning assessment, many aspects of the College’s attention to general education are strong and noteworthy. A more coherent, systematic, and mission-driven approach to general education, however, will benefit the College greatly, especially as it continues to enhance its academic profile in a competitive higher education market.

3. Institutional Planning

As the College begins its next iteration of the planning cycle, the Self-study Steering Committee recommends that the process consider a set of internal, non-compliance-related recommendations developed during the self-study process. These recommendations relate to the following topics—advising, faculty and staff development, governance, resource allocation, and communication—and are listed in Appendix ###. The Steering Committee hopes that the College’s planning process will

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recognize the deliberative rigor that generated these recommendations, and that they represent collective opinion of an informed and diverse group of campus constituents.

* * *

While it may be true that few institutions embrace the Middle States self study process with joyful anticipation, it is also true that Ithaca College has appreciated this opportunity to evaluate its progress in key areas. Ten years ago, at this point in the last Middle States process, we welcomed to campus our new president, Peggy R. Williams. Under her skillful leadership the College has implemented critical new initiatives, perhaps the most significant being the creation of a sense of community and shared responsibility for our collective mission. This self-study has enabled us to chart our progress in that collective mission, particularly in the areas of planning, governance, faculty and staff development, academic programs, the comprehensive campaign, diversity initiatives, enrollment stability, and sustainability. We are proud of the progress we have made in these areas, as we also acknowledge the primary areas that require improvement. In this last year of Peggy Williams’ presidency at Ithaca College, as we once again complete our Middle States self-study, we are grateful to our president for her guidance, insight, and most of all her enlightened leadership that has encouraged our initiative and growth.

Ithaca College Middle States Reaccreditation Self-Study · 2007-10-01 · Committee selects annual...

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