Editor in Chief Lindsey Hollenbaugh spoke with President Tom Rochon after the all-college meeting held two weeks ago about whether the college is as academically rigorous as it should be and the administration’s plans to combat declining demographics.

(Part 2 of a two-part interview.)

Lindsey Hollenbaugh: You talk about change and welcoming it. Is there a kind of complacency going on with faculty and staff in helping students get the best educational experience possible at Ithaca College?

President Tom Rochon: I would not say complacency because I want to stress the other side of the coin as far as change and our reactions to change. It’s absolutely amazing the amount of times alumni and students tell me that someone stepped up to help them personally at an important moment. … I have not experienced anything this deep in any other college or university that I’ve worked in, which is amazing. That should always be front and center. These other questions, though, are not about the student as a person, but about the student as someone who has placed their trust in us for education. This tends not to get the same attention from us. So it’s not complacency; it’s not a lack of commitment. I’m simply trying to take that same energy and commitment and take it and broaden the focus to include not only the student as a person, but the student as someone who trusts us to give

them the education that they need and will carry them through as a life-long learner.

LH: Are we as academically rigorous as we should be at Ithaca College?

TR: It’s an important question. It’s very difficult for me to judge that because I’ve never been a student here. I’ve never been a faculty member here. And sitting in my office, even talking with people, it’s hard to judge. I will say this: Many faculty feel that our environment could be and should be more academically rigorous. We try to combine on this campus challenge with support, to challenge students to push beyond the capacities they thought they had while supporting them so that they are able to succeed or give them the help that they need to be challenged. Many faculty feel that we could emphasize the challenge part or that equation more heavily. That’s how faculty feel, and I tend to trust

their instincts.

LH: How do you expect faculty and staff to step up to this challenge?

TR: If I’m successful in describing the challenge well, the vast majority of faculty and staff will feel an enormous upwelling of energy and commitment around doing it. Again, this is a very committed faculty and staff; they are very committed to higher education and making Ithaca College excellent. ... I’m trying to put more of the focus on the integrative educational experience — that includes the cocurriculum, life on campus — to make this an incredible environment for students to be in.

LH: In your speech, you married mission and money, pointing out that the college is planning ahead for the future changes in enrollment demographics. Carl Sgrecci and Eric Maguire presented a type of 7 percent solution to our demographic problems. This model was presented as the most viable option, despite the proven drop in future demographics. Eric said regional recruiters would be added, but how else, specifically, will the model be achieved?

TR: The regional recruiters are indeed just one part of the overall picture, though they are an easy part to describe and grasp. We also need to be much more effective than we have been in describing what Ithaca College is and stands for — so a better marketing effort so that people know about us and why they should choose us. If we are successful in our commitment to innovation and creativity, for example, that will be very attractive to new students. If we are successful in taking (IC)2 … [and] make that a part of the experience of a significant number of our students, that will be part of the solution. We’ve done other things that are some way mechanical and internal in enrollment management such as re-establishing early decision. We’ve done things on our campus tour to make it more attractive. The campus tour now starts from the Peggy Williams Center with this beautiful building with its amazing views, which makes us more attractive. If you emphasize any one of those things they sound wanting in terms of the overall goal. If you put them all together plus looks that we’re taking at our Web site at how we communicate with applicants, they all add up to a very substantial effort to make sure that people who should choose Ithaca College choose

Ithaca College.

LH: Is this just wishful thinking or can we really increase our applications by 7 percent over the next five to six years?

TR: I hired a vice president for enrollment management, Eric Maguire, for whom I have a great deal of confidence. ... What I asked him to do was to give me a number — I did not give it to him — that he felt was aggressive and would not cause him to lie awake at night. He came up with 7 percent five years out. The important thing to say is that number came from our enrollment expert, not a mandate from a financial officer or me because we would have been just throwing a dart and saying, “Hit that.” So, yes, I believe this number is achievable, but we need to be focused and purposeful in order to reach it.

LH: Going forward from here, what do you hope the faculty and staff members took away from the meeting?

TR: Certainly I wanted the concerns around near-term layoffs to be taken off the table and alleviated. ... However, if that’s all they took away, that meeting was a huge failure because there is a crisis in higher education. Ithaca College is part of it, and it’s a crisis that we will actually start to feel only after the economy has come back to normal. We have to finance ourselves in the future in a different way than the past.

It’s been on the backs of students and their families. It can’t be that in the future. I hope they also took away the great sense of energy around the feeling that if we can be student-centered around the educational environment and pursuing excellence in the educational environment and innovative in the way we think about how we create educational opportunities for students. Then this college will become so well known as a bed of innovation and creativity and excellence that the financial crisis that is coming will not affect us at all because students will clamor to come here. I hope that people take away that combination of relief, exuberance

and energy.

To read the entire one-on-one interview with Rochon visit www.theithacan.org.