Arlene Wolff ’57 exemplifies Ithaca College’s spirit of community, mentorship, and service. Her journey, from student and physical therapist to trustee and philanthropist, shaped not only her life but the lives of many others as well, including the patients she helped in her professional career, the IC students she mentored, the thousands of IC alumni whose futures she empowered during her 25 years on the board of trustees, and the physical therapy students past and present—not to mention their countless patients—who earned degrees and careers thanks to the scholarship she founded.
The native New Yorker’s connection to IC began in 1953 when she enrolled as a physical therapy major, not on the campus we know today but in classrooms in downtown Ithaca. “It was wonderful to see our college grow from downtown and how it grew from 1961 to where we are today,” Wolff recalled. “I bet 90% of the students today probably have no idea that there was a campus downtown before 1961, but that’s an important part of Ithaca College, and the people from the town who supported the college along the way.”
After she graduated, Wolff’s professional values as a physical therapist resonated with the values championed by IC: a responsibility to improve the lives of others. She remembered some of her first patients fondly: “I worked for 52 years with the degree I received from Ithaca College. I am still in contact with some of those families who were my very first patients. One person, when she was a year old, I started to treat her. Now she’s with the Department of Justice, and she prosecutes sex offenders. She was one of my first patients. I am like part of her family down here [in Florida].”
As Wolff’s career flourished, so did her commitment to IC and her understanding of the challenges students face. As a clinical instructor, she mentored many physical therapy students, including Jody Scriber ’72 and Kent Scriber ’72. Both went on to attain noteworthy careers in the Ithaca area—Jody as a longtime physical therapist at Racker and Kent as IC’s head athletic trainer and professor of exercise and sport sciences. The Scribers, whose children also attended IC, cite Wolff’s guidance as a significant difference-maker in the trajectory of their careers.
Wolff’s postgraduate involvement with IC, first on the alumni board and eventually as a trustee, began at an alumni gathering on Long Island attended by celebrated alumnus Ben Light ’36. “It was a dinner,” she recalled, “and Ben turned around and said to me, ‘Arlene, you’re going to get involved.’ I knew I was hooked.”
Wolff’s advocacy for IC as an alumna sometimes cast her in the role of recruiter. “I started sending alumni out and representing the college at events in and around New York,” she said. “The thought was there’s no need for someone from the college to come down when we have all these alumni that know the college and would be happy to represent it. For many years, we had people from the alumni board going out and representing the school to prospective students.”
Wolff’s devotion to IC proved contagious for her family. Her husband, Mel, who passed away in 2021, worked so actively alongside Arlene during her years on the alumni and trustee boards that he was recognized as an honorary alumnus. Their son, Bert, graduated from IC in 1981 with a politics degree. “Ithaca was in our blood, in our DNA,” Wolff said. “To this day, if I see an Ithaca sticker or someone walking by with a hat or sweatshirt, I stop them, and we talk.”
In 2007, she made a generous decision that would have a lasting impact for Ithaca College’s physical therapy students. She and IC established the Arlene Makransky Wolff ’57 Endowed Scholarship for outstanding physical therapy students.
“The fundraising team approached me,” Wolff said, “and they asked, ‘Would you ever consider a scholarship?’ And I said, ‘Yes, let’s do it, right now. The scholarship could be for any student in physical therapy, but I would prefer if the student had an interest in pediatrics.’”
