Ithaca College SGA
311 Egbert Hall,
953 Danby Rd.
Ithaca, NY 14850
p. (607) 274-3085 / f. (607) 274-1725
sga@ithaca.edu

From our friends at Academic and Enrichment Services

Hey all,

This is as seen in the latest Intercom (11/4)

Freshmen: Take advantage of this if you need. Don't be ignorant or stubborn. Grades stick with you for your entire academic career (gpa affects grad. school too...) but AES is here to help.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Happy Fall Semester!

We're going to make it!

A newsletter was sent to all First Year students encouraging them to come in for academic support services, e.g. individual and group tutoring, study groups and general academic consultation on matters such as study skills, time management, critical reading, note- taking, etc.

We have recently reviewed the midterm grades of all first year students and an email was sent to those students with weak performance (C- or below) in one or more courses stating that by now they should have spoken with professors and faculty advisors, and are aware of their options. We've asked them to come in and let us coach them through the rest of the semester with the variety of services and opportunities we have available.

Our dynamic First Year Coaches, Zach Berenzweig and Kaitlin Kohberger are off and running...communicating with a First Year facebook community and visiting ICSM classes.

Beginning Thursday 11/5/09, AES is offering workshops every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday until the week before finals. Please tell your students to call the office and register for a session or two: ACHIEVING STUDENT SUCCESS: LIFE and SELF MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES; EFFECTIVE LISTENING and NOTE-TAKING; and STRESS and TIME MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES

We are in receipt of your early alert forms and email referrals and are responding as requested. Please call the office if you have questions (4-3381).

Our new hours: Mon-Thu, 10am - midnight; Fri, 10am - 4pm.

Enjoy this wonderful month of November!

Yolanda Clarke, AES Director

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

That's all for now. Stay tuned for updates coming shortly...



See you around campus!

dan

Posted by VP of Academics on 11/04/09



Course Registration Cometh

Hey Everyone,

Just a friendly reminder that course registration will be the week of November 9th. Full details of registration are on the registrar's website at http://www.ithaca.edu/registrar/. Hopefully you're all aware of registration and have scheduled meetings with your advisers as needed. Be sure to check your registration status on Homerconnect beforethe morning that you plan to register to make sure you have no holds!

Speaking of registration...

For all you Parkies out there: your Park school senator, Sherry Shen, wants to let you know of a pretty cool course being offered: "There will be a class called: Media for Social Change that will probably be taught by IC Alum Andy Orgel (TV-Radio 1974 - Chairman & CEO of Global Media Group). It will be in the Spring 2010 semester and is a sustainability simulation course that will only be available to Park School Undergraduate Majors. It will teach role playing and additional strategic communication tools to create sustainability initiatives and programs. It will be offered from April 22-24 --around the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. Assoc. Dean Virginia Mansfield Richardson and Dean Gayeski are encouraging Parkies to take up on this opportunity of taking such a helpful class."

And in other Park news, also from the desk of Sherry: "The national Park School alumni board came in recently to offer feedback and advice for two days. The Park School definitely felt the alumni board meeting to be highly useful and productive in creating greater progress in making the Park School. Alumni met up with Park School faculty, staff, and students to talk about their experiences at IC and what they think that IC could do in the future."

Awesome! That's all for now.



Posted by VP of Academics on 11/02/09



Updates!

I hope everyone's fall breaks were safe and relaxing. My block II resolution is to provide updates here much more frequently and ideally once a week (as it should be).

Anyway, there's a great deal in Academics News...

1. Academics Policy Committee: The first meeting was held. The minutes have not been posted but should eventually be here [url=http://www.ithaca.edu/provost/docs/apc/][/url]. The bulk of the discussion regarded the late submission of grades for students who miss assessments. The college attendance policy is also getting a detailed look since it is technically against New York code the way it is written.

2. ITS: I was encouraged to look into a couple different aspects of ITS. I e-mailed Mr. Michael Taves, the Executive Director of ITS and got a very prompt reply to the four main questions I had. A great deal of frustration stems from ignorance. That is to say: many times people are quick to point fingers, especially if a person or in this case Office can't easily defend itself. Mr. Taves provided some very logical answers to the concerns I had.

------a. Network Outages: There were two within about a week in October, both on school nights. Mr. Taves explained that power outages and new back-up generators that should have recognized the power outages were at fault. It's a new installation design they had in place which the "kinks" are being worked out of. Note: there haven't been any network outages since.
------b. Wireless Coverage: Largely a concern of Apogee, the ISP - Internet Service Provider. Again, it's a brand new service having not been offered for more than 3 months. All of the "dead spots" have not honestly been found. Students are asked if they experience bad connectivity in their residence halls to contact Apogee or if they experience it anywhere else on campus, contact the ITS HelpDesk. They can't fix it if they don't know it's not working!
-----c. Relationship with Apogee: I explained that students are honestly frustrated with Apogee, so I was curious what ITS's relationship was. The relationship dates back to even before Mr. Taves started working at IC and he explained that the process for selecting them was competitive, consulting with both the SGA and Residential Life, and that they (ITS) did consider other ISPs in the selection process. Ultimately (to make a long story short) when it came down to service offered, quality of service, and price, Apogee was the best provider.
-----d. Campus Computer Boot/Log-In Time: ITS is completely aware of how long it takes to log-on to campus (Windows) computers. In the short term, they honestly don't have any quick fixes. Mr. Taves did assure me that there IS more than one person working on more than just one strategy to decrease the boot/log-in time.

3. Looking at the Calendar...
------October 23rd -- Last Day to Add/Drop Block II courses (THIS FRIDAY)
------November 6-8 -- Family Weekend. Don't be surprised to see a BUNCH of people on campus and especially at the Football game at 1 pm on Saturday at Butterfield Stadium against Alfred! GO!
------November 9-13 -- Registration for Spring! (It's going to be May before you know it)

On a Side Note:

1. I had lunch with the Trustees just before break while they were visiting the college and having a bunch of meetings. The invitation went out in an intercom announcement and was available for an current students. It was great to sit down with them because they genuinely wanted to sit down with us and hear what students had to say. We talked a great deal about the unexpected increase in enrollment this year and tuition (among many other positive things!) Check out Chris' (Student Trustee) page to see his report of the Board's meeting.

As always, I'm very open to student opinions, supportive or critical. If there's an issue you'd like to be investigated and possibly changed, let me know and we can work together to better understand it and/or possibly change it.


Time to Hit the Books,

dan



Posted by VP of Academics on 10/21/09



Welcome Back and Recent Happenings

Hey all,

Welcome to/back to campus! This post is a bit tardy because, though we haven't even started regular senate meetings (elections are happening NOW!), there's been so much going on.

1. Faculty Council Meeting: The faculty council is comprised of between 20-30 faculty represent the nearly 700 part- and full- time faculty much like how the SGA represents the nearly 6,500 students. They've graciously invited student representation at their meetings. Since the senate hasn't really started up, I sat in on their first meeting myself. A good report of the meeting can be found in this week's issue of the Ithacan on the front page/left column (see the report here). It was a pretty interesting meeting though I didn't stay for it's entirety (the first informal senate meeting was starting). Let me know if you're interested in attending one of these meetings.

2. Elections: I've also been hard at work with Jeff and Will prepping for the election. Our hope is that everything will go off without a hitch. We've been proof reading and testing the ballots to ensure a smooth election process. I'm up extra late tonight logging into the site as well as the SGA account checking if anyone has reported any problems. So far so good!

3. Academic Policy Committee: SGA needs student representatives to serve on the Academic Policies Committee (APC). Representatives are needed from each of the five schools as well as the DIIS. It's not often that students are able to sit on committees next to faculty and staff of the school and have their voices heard directly. In this case it's critical too because a) Our 7 voices will be representing the voices of over 6,300 students, and because b) the college is in the process of completely restructuring it's curriculum.
The APC meets monthly on Friday afternoons from 3:00pm-4:00pm There are also two subcommittees (Curriculum or Policy) which will meet on Friday afternoons as well. The first general body APC meeting is Oct. 2nd. If you're interested in being involved with the APC let me know and I can get you more information.

Whoa. That's about it for now. Is it Friday yet? Get out (or...just stay on your computer) and vote! The link should be in your school-account e-mail with a unique username and password.

cheers,
dan

Posted by VP of Academics on 09/09/09



Job & Internship Opportunity!

This news just in from John Fracchia at Career Services. (I definitely encourage everyone to take advantage of the many opportunities out there to gain the experience and knowledge we need to be successful; and here is one way you can start!)

During winter break, Career Services is co-sponsoring a series of career fairs called Career and Internship Connection (CIC). CIC events are being held in five major cities and there will be 200+ companies offering interviews for job and internship opportunities to Ithaca students!

Dates and complete event details are available at: http://cic.erecruiting.com

Although students can participate in CIC events just by showing up, if they apply for jobs and interviews by Monday, December 1, 2008, they will have first chance at interview slots.

Posted by VP of Academics on 11/18/08



News from the VP of Academics

Check back later for updated news from the VP of Academics!

Posted by SGA on 08/23/08