The Ithaca College Board of Trustees has appointed a transition team to assist and support incoming President Shirley Collado during her first year.

Tom Grape, chairman of the Board of Trustees, organized the transition team and has appointed seven faculty members, nine staff and five students to be on the team, according to an announcement posted on Intercom. Jason Freitag, associate professor of history, and Nancy Pringle, senior vice president and general counsel, will be co-chairing the transition team.

Grape said the purpose of the transition team is to provide a mechanism for ongoing conversations with Collado and the rest of the campus community throughout the first year of her presidency.

Freitag said it is a good practice in higher education to introduce a new president into an institution. He said the transition team wants to make the smoothest and quickest transition for Collado while she assumes her new position. The team wants to assure communication and transparency with the community throughout this process, Freitag said.

“We’re trying to use this big committee to get all the schools and all the divisions of the community somehow represented on that committee,” Freitag said. “One of the main aspects of the charge that has come out is ‘communicate regularly with the campus community,’ and we’re taking that super seriously.”

Grape said the team will also be establishing an outreach plan to involve more members of the community in supporting Collado during her transition.

“The team has held one meeting so far, so it is in the early stages of developing its work plan,” Grape said.

Freitag said the team is working on a plan to communicate more information about the transition team to the campus community soon.