Ithaca College President Peggy R. Williams Announces Plans to Retire in 2008
Ithaca, NY—Ithaca College president Peggy R. Williams announced today that she plans to retire at the end of the upcoming academic year, concluding 11 years at the helm of the institution. Williams took office on July 1, 1997, as the seventh—and first female—president of Ithaca College. Her retirement will be effective May 31, 2008.
Williams made the decision to announce her retirement now after carefully considering the timing for the college. “Among many things, by next May we will have concluded two significant milestones—the completion of our $115 million comprehensive campaign and our 10-year reaccreditation review,” said Williams. “This will provide an excellent platform for a new president to continue to advance Ithaca College’s ‘Commitment to Excellence.’”
“Peggy has provided Ithaca College with outstanding leadership through a period of immense change and challenge in higher education, and it would be impossible to list all of her accomplishments,” said Bill Schwab ’68, chairman of the Ithaca College Board of Trustees. “We are deeply appreciative of all that she has done to strengthen the college academically, administratively and financially.”
In addition to spearheading Ithaca’s first comprehensive fund-raising campaign, Williams has led the college through a strategic planning process that culminated in the Institutional Plan—a blueprint of the college’s essential priorities and goals for the next two decades. The plan reaffirmed Ithaca’s identity as a residential teaching college with an emphasis on the highest quality undergraduate education.
“While we are certainly saddened that she will be leaving, she does so having built a solid foundation for the college’s future,” Schwab added. “By making her intentions known now, we will be able to conduct a comprehensive search for her successor during the course of the coming year.”
At the request of the board of trustees, Williams will continue to serve Ithaca College during a sabbatical year in 2008–9. During that year, she will maintain a residence in Ithaca.
After retiring, Williams plans to reside in Johnson, Vermont, and Fernie, British Columbia. She will remain active in many of the professional and community organizations she now serves.
Williams has devoted the majority of her working life to higher education, accumulating 36 years of experience—including 19 as a college president.
“I have been at Ithaca College longer than anywhere else and I think that reflects my respect for, and love of, the college,” said Williams.
In a letter to the campus community announcing her retirement, Williams wrote, “I cannot imagine a better group of faculty, staff and students that I could serve. I will miss the genuine spirit of community and decency that makes Ithaca College the very special place it is.”
Williams came to Ithaca from Lyndon State College in Vermont, where she had been president since 1989. She had previously held a variety of academic and administrative positions at Trinity College in Burlington and within the Vermont State Colleges system. Before entering the field of higher education, she was a social worker for the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont and the Monroe County Department of Social Services in New York.
In 1990 the publisher of “Creating Excellence” magazine named Williams one of Vermont’s “top 10 achievers.” She was the first recipient of the Jackie M. Gribbons Leadership Award in 1984 from the American Council on Education. The organization also established an honor in her name—the Margaret R. Williams Emerging Professional Award—to recognize the accomplishments of young female professionals in higher education.
Williams contributes to the national dialogue on important higher education issues through her service on the NCAA Division III Presidents Council and the board of directors of the Canada-U.S. Foundation for Educational Exchange. She was previously on the board of directors of both the American Council on Education (ACE) and the Council of Independent Colleges, and chaired the ACE Commission on Women in Higher Education.
She has also been active in a number of community organizations. Currently a member of the Tompkins Trust Company board of directors, she previously served on the Ithaca Downtown Partnership Community Advisory Board and is a past chair of the board of directors of the Sacred Heart School of Montreal. She has put her passion for physical fitness to good causes as a participant in the Women Swimmin’ fund-raiser for Hospicare and Palliative Care Services as well as the AIDS Ride for Life.
A native of Montreal, Williams has lived in the United States since 1968 and is a citizen of both the United States and Canada. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in psychology from St. Michael’s College of the University of Toronto; a master of education degree from the University of Vermont; and a doctorate in administration, planning, and social policy from Harvard University.
For more information and background on President Williams, visit www.ithaca.edu/president.
Coeducational and nonsectarian, Ithaca College is a nationally recognized comprehensive college of some 6,100 undergraduates and 300 graduate students. The college offers more than 100 degree programs through its School of Business, School of Health Sciences and Human Performance, School of Humanities and Sciences, School of Music, Roy H. Park School of Communications, Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies and Division of Graduate Studies.
Peggy R. Williams—Selected Accomplishments at Ithaca College
- Launched a campus-wide strategic planning process that culminated in 2001 with the adoption of the Institutional Plan, a blueprint for achieving the college’s essential priorities and goals. The plan has led to such important initiatives as the establishment of the Division of Interdisciplinary and International Studies; Center for the Study of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity; Center for Faculty Research and Development; Martin Luther King Jr. Scholar Program; All-College Honors and First-Year Seminar Programs; and Quality of Work Life initiative.
- Developed a Campus Master Plan to provide a “road map” for major facilities and land use for the next two decades. Under the plan, the college added nearly 700 beds to campus housing through leasing the College Circle Apartments complex; is nearing completion of a new “green” School of Business building; recently began construction on the Gateway Building to house offices for enrollment planning, human resources and graduate studies as well as senior administrative offices; and anticipates breaking ground on a multipurpose Athletics and Events Center within the year.
- Adopted sustainability as a central principle in the life of the college, helping make Ithaca a national leader in campus sustainability efforts. Among the significant public commitments she has made to such practices, Williams signed the Talloires Declaration, a 10-point action plan for incorporating sustainability and environmental literacy in teaching, research, operations and outreach; and the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, under which Ithaca College will initiate the development of a comprehensive plan to achieve climate neutrality as soon as possible.
- Embraced the role of community service in striving to achieve the college’s mission of encouraging all members of the campus community “to share the responsibilities of citizenship and service in the global community.” The college holds an annual Celebration of Service to honor students, staff and administrators who have performed acts of community service within the last year, a tradition that began in 1998 as part of her inauguration as president. The college created the Peggy R. Williams Award for Academic and Community Leadership to better reflect Ithaca’s recognition of those students who excel in academic performance, perform service to the college community and nation and represent an exemplary level of accomplishment. Ithaca College was named to the national 2006 President’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for its encouragement of civic engagement.
- Stabilized enrollment while strengthening the academic profile as well as the diversity of incoming students. She expanded academic offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including the launch of the college’s first doctoral program, leading to a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree. She also established the First-Year Reading Initiative, which seeks to build a community of learners by encouraging incoming students to read a shared work of literature that they will then discuss in small-group sessions with volunteer faculty and staff facilitators.
- “U.S. News & World Report” has ranked Ithaca College in the top 10 in its category of “America’s Best Colleges” for 10 straight years, and has named Ithaca among the top 10 “best values” for offering a quality education at a reasonable cost. Ithaca is included in “The Best 361 Colleges,” published by the Princeton Review, which also named the School of Business one of the nation’s outstanding business schools. Other kudos have come from publications ranging from “Men’s Fitness” magazine, which rated Ithaca one of the top 25 fittest campuses in the nation, to the “Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students,” which recognized Ithaca College as one of the country’s 100 friendliest campuses for LGBT students.
Originally published in News Releases: Ithaca College President Peggy R. Williams Announces Plans to Retire in 2008.
