Rachel Reuben, associate vice president for marketing communications at Ithaca College, will spend her last day at the college July 3 before she assumes her new position as vice president for communications at Colgate University. At Colgate she will have oversight of the school’s communications and messaging, and will serve on the senior leadership team under President Jeffrey Herbst.

Reuben joined the college in 2010 and has since been at the forefront of the first college-wide strategic marketing effort that has produced a new logo, a plan for crisis communications, a trademark and licensing program and a comprehensive messaging system. Reuben said she considers this rebranding effort to be her biggest accomplishment.

The branding initiative also included a search for a new college mascot, which began in November 2011 through a mascot task force co-chaired by Reuben, but President Tom Rochon terminated the search that June.

She said the college will continue to implement some major projects in which she had heavy involvement, such as the comprehensive fundraising campaign and the implementation of the new athletic identity this fall, though she will have to watch the outcome from afar.

“I’m definitely very sad to leave Ithaca College; it’s going to be bittersweet,” she said.

Reuben said the offer from Colgate was unexpected but is the next step up in her career aspirations: ascending from an associate VP level to a president’s staff position.

“I wasn’t searching,” she said. “This kind of came out of left field over the last two months.”

Representing the college, Reuben presented at the 2013 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education hosted by the American Marketing Association, and she has made contributions to The Chronicle of Higher Education.