The Ithaca College Faculty Council met Dec. 2 to discuss updates to cybersecurity policy, changes to the library subscription catalogue and to vote on previously proposed changes to the Faculty Handbook.
Cybersecurity policy
Dave Weil, senior vice president for strategic services and initiatives and chief information officer, spoke to the council about updates in computer policy and cybersecurity at the college. Weil said professors will no longer be allowed to use personal email accounts when communicating with students in any context, and that ithaca.edu email addresses will be required for all college communications beginning in January 2026. Weil addressed the recent wave of phishing emails that spread around IC in October. He said many of the college’s computer policies were written over a decade ago.
Weil said he and the Department of Information Technology and Analytics, alongside Emily Rockett — vice president, general counsel and secretary to the Board of Trustees — and Melanie Stein, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, are working to update the computer policy. He said the goals of the updates were to secure the college’s digital systems and protect the data of community members.
“We’re trying to always balance being as secure as we can [with] usability and functionality,” Weil said. “We know that [if] you lock everything down, then it’s not usable for people.”
Weil said professors will still be able to reach out to outside email addresses with their IC address, however they should not use outside addresses when emailing other IC addresses. He said there are a number of professors who automatically forward mail from their IC email addresses to their personal emails and that this is a security risk.
“[These changes] mean that we will have much higher confidence as to who we are communicating with, which is really important,” Weil said. “Bad faith actors are out there. They’re real.”
Weil said these changes will also help keep staff and faculty’s personal and work lives separate. He said when it comes to potential lawsuits, personal email usage can lead to people’s personal accounts being roped into active investigations, potentially revealing sensitive information.
Ruth Barber, associate professor in the Department of Theatre Production and Management, asked Weil whether this would affect the ability of stage managers in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance to create production-specific email accounts to communicate with the cast and crew. Weil said IT has the ability to create special-use and departmental email accounts and that there is a process in place to arrange for one. This will also apply to guest directors who lead productions at IC.
Saviana Stănescu, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre Studies, asked how Weil defined the difference between personal and business use of an IC email address and whether it could still be used for a professor’s scholarship and creative work. Weil said he does not want to set absolutes and for professors to use their judgement in those cases.
Library subscriptions
Terri Ann Coronel, electronic resources and collection strategies librarian, spoke to the council regarding updates to the library’s subscription catalogue. Coronel said the library received a flat budget for the 2025-26 academic year and as a result have had to implement a number of budget cuts. She said many cuts were made over the summer, but that another round would be implemented Jan. 1.
Coronel said when accounting for subscription price increases, the library is working with a budget cut of around 20%. She said the library staff saved around $26,000 through administrative changes and negotiations with vendors.
The library uses a number of metrics to determine which serial and database subscriptions should be cut. Serials are subscriptions to continuous publications like newspapers and magazines. Coronel said they use user data to figure out which subscriptions are too expensive per user, based on the price of the subscription and the number of times the resource was used by students or faculty. She said most of the changes to database subscriptions were made over the summer, with the exception of ScienceDirect, a database of peer-reviewed scientific articles, which will have less content available beginning in January 2026. The majority of upcoming changes will be to serials.
Kathleen Mulligan, professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance Performance, asked if faculty would be made aware of which subscriptions would be cancelled or reduced. College librarian Laura Kuo said faculty will be notified of the working lists in order to give feedback.
“We would encourage faculty department chairs to reach out to us at any time to talk about these decisions,” Kuo said. “If there was a clear, obvious need to bring something back, we would look at that. We would love faculty input on this.”
Faculty Handbook changes
The council revisited the proposed handbook changes discussed in the Nov. 4 meeting. In the previous meeting, members of the council voiced concern and confusion about the changes and pushed the vote. Stein, who did not attend the November meeting, gave the council more background insight into the proposed changes and addressed previously expressed concerns.
Stein said the first proposed language change of “contracts” to “letters of appointment” and “salary letters” were more accurate to the operating reality of the college. She said the documents received by IC faculty each year are not actually contracts because there is no rehiring process and no renegotiation of terms. The change to a salary letter removes the need for faculty to sign the papers yearly, leading to less administrative work.
Stein said the second proposed change, regarding additional time for meetings at the beginning of the academic year, would not cut into the summer plans of faculty. She said the removal of an exact date from the handbook was due to the college not being able to promise that date every year. She said the college could not make them work more over summer simply because the date was removed because it would require the college to restructure their entire academic schedule.
The council voted on the two changes separately. The first proposed change passed with 18 votes for and two votes against, with two abstaining. The second proposed change passed with 15 votes for and five against, with two abstaining.
The council then voted to appoint the next year’s council chair and cochair. Council chair Dennis Charsky, professor in the Department of Strategic Communication and the director of the communication strategy and design program and vice–chair Kelley Sullivan, associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, both ran unopposed for reelection. Both candidates were unanimously confirmed.
The council moved to an executive session in which they discussed honorary degree nominations.
The Ithaca College Faculty Council meets from 4-6 p.m. on the first Tuesday of every month in the Taughannock Falls Room of the Campus Center. The faculty council can be contacted at [email protected].
