First-Year Experience

On behalf of the First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee (FYECC), I extend a heartfelt welcome to all members of this year's entering class. As a new student at Ithaca College, we hope that each of you will accept the responsibility of community membership as you pursue your academic and personal aspirations. We believe that the First-Year Experience that we have created will help you to make an easy transition to Ithaca, and support you in achieving your academic and personal goals. Please take some time to review this web site, as it will provide you with helpful information about the First-Year Experience. I encourage you to take full advantage of each of these opportunities as they will help make your first year at Ithaca a successful one.

Each year the First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee selects a thematic focus for the incoming class that is grounded in Ithaca College vision statement. “Intellect” was selected as the thematic focus for the 2009-2010 academic year. Through the components of the First-Year Experience, Ithaca College students will have both the opportunity and environment to engage in the purposeful processes of discussion and reflection regarding the meaning of intellect and intellectual development. The First-Year Experience provides Ithaca College students with the opportunity to reach beyond their current understanding, to strengthen their capacity to think through a problem or challenge, and to discover the appeal of the unknown.  Your challenge as a new student will present itself in the form of new ideas, new approaches to problem-solving, new enocunters with differences, and a variety of new perspectives requiring analysis and integration -- all of this while you acclimate to a new living and learning environment.

Members of the FYECC are dedicated to planning and implementing educational programs and activities that will assist you in making connections with faculty and staff and in thinking about the person you would like to become. As Dean for the First-Year Experience and Chairperson of the First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee, I invite you to accept the challenge to reach beyond your intellectual grasp and embrace the many opportunities to learn both inside and outside the classroom.  To ask questions, read, analyze, synthesize, write, and discuss.  I encourage you to take advantage of all these opportunities as you take action steps to foster your intellectual development.

I welcome you to Ithaca College and hope you have an outstanding year!

Dr. Roger G. Richardson
Associate Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs/Dean First-Year Experience