College & university presidents who blog…. new at Ithaca College

College and university presidents who blog often come from the ranks of new presidents. The featured entry as the new year starts is Thomas Rochon, who started as president at Ithaca College last July 1.

The presidential blog first appeared in September and has continued each month since then for a total of 9 postings, with entries ranging from the relatively trivial (remembering phone numbers and campus directions) to the entertaining (the annual football rivalry with SUNY Cortland and the campus Christmas party) to the very serious (reactions to the economic plague). That’s a good mix and a good pace and bodes well for meeting one of the primary blog challenges in a busy schedule… reasonably frequent new additions.

Ithaca College Financial Plans

The last post of 2008 focusd on the president’s 6 resolutions for 2009… and not surprisingly, all of them in some way address upcoming fiscal challenges, especially the first three:

  1. Ithaca College will increase the cost of tuition in the coming year by a smaller percentage than at any time in the last five years.

  1. We will increase our financial aid budget by the largest amount in College history.

  1. We will expand our emergency financial aid fund for those students whose personal or family financial circumstances change in unexpected ways while they are enrolled.

  1. We will move ahead with our strategic priorities to advance educational excellence, even where those require new funding.

  1. We will pay for the reduced rate of tuition increase, the increased financial aid, and the excellence initiatives in part by scrutinizing expenditures within the College. We will question whether each category of expenditure directly contributes to the quality of the student educational experience. Where it does not, we will evaluate the continued need for that expenditure.

  1. We will ask our friends and alumni to help us assemble the resources necessary to keep Ithaca College as accessible as possible to all students of talent.

President Rochon’s blog is at http://www.ithaca.edu/president/blog/

 

35 Presidents Who Blog

 

See the list of 35 college and university presidents who blog at http://www.bobjohnsonblog.com/presidents-who-blog/

 

Expect more new entries soon. 

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