Intellect (2009-10 Thematic Focus)

The Foundational Theme for the First-Year Experience, 2009-2010

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. As such, each year the First-Year Experience Coordinating Committee selects a thematic focus for the incoming year grounded in this vision for Ithaca College.

"Intellect" will serve as the thematic focus for the entering Class of 2013 and the First-Year Experience for the 2009-2010 academic year. Through the components of the First-Year Experience, and other programs on campus during the year, first-year students will read about, discuss and reflect upon issues that relate to intellect and intellectual development. Webster defines intellect as "the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands; as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge."

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 encounters 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.

We invite you to accept the challenge to reach beyond your intellectual grasp and embrace the many opportunities to learn both inside and outside of the classroom.  To ask questions, read, analyze, synthesize, write, and discuss.  Positive, constructive learning is all about our ability to accommodate change within ourselves and to require greater expectations of ourselves.  The intellectual journey of life-long learning is worthy of you and of your goals and aspirations.  We invite you to join us along the way.