Summertime is Gorges

I hope you’re all as excited as I am to be starting up college again with fresh new courses and experiences to take on! The life of a CMD major is always fun, interactive, and roaring with energy. The work we do is hands on and each class, project, and paper shapes and influences the way we see the world and how we live in it.

Be as active on campus as you can to get the full college experience and I promise your first year will be filled with excitement and lots of new opportunities. You’ll see exactly why I decided to stay to work during the summer!

Best of luck.

--Josh Rivera

Whoa.  Three weeks!  I can hardly believe that the summer has flown by so fast...and I can see how you might be thinking the same thing.  You'll be a college student before you know it!  Meeting you all this summer was an absolute honor and I cannot express how enthused I am to get to know all of you in our CMD "family".

You are about to embark on a journey--a journey that will help you open your eyes to yourself, the world, and the rest of your life.  Exciting, isn't it?  College is all about finding yourself, your true passions, and then combining those two aspects into what could quite possibly become your future...and oh, what a bright future that is!  I say journey not to be cliche and corny, but from experience I can personally tell you that I have truly found myself...not only from taking classes and working with professors, but also by studying abroad twice (Paris and Los Angeles), and also becoming involved and volunteering in the community here.

It is so fitting that my good friend Cornell wrote directly before my post, because the Senior Class and SGA office are both in the same center...The Center for Student Leadership and Involvement.  Cornell was completely correct when he said that being involved on campus is the "other piece of the pie" as a college student.  There are countless opportunities for you to become involved as an IC student, in a myriad of different positions.  Whether you like to volunteer, perform, raise money, campaign for political groups, debate, celebrate...you name it, and I garauntee that Ithaca offers some sort of club/organization for you to join.  

IC will be holding an involvement fair on September 13th in the Campus Center where all of our organizations will be trying to recruit new members--YOU!  So be sure to mark that down on your calendars.

Other than that, enjoy the rest of your time at home, or for some of you, start the countdown!  Your time at Ithaca is right around the corner...and I can't wait for you to step around to see what's waiting for you!  Good luck, and see you soon.

...and now I leave you with a video about Ithaca...featuring my good friend, Wendy Horning :)    

Hi—please welcome guest blogger, Cornell Woodson CMD ’09.  He’s the incoming President of the IC Student Government Association (SGA), a campus organization you might consider participating in—CMD students historically occupy many leadership roles in campus activities.  MLK

Hello new CMD students!

It is an honor to welcome you all to what will certainly be the most exciting four years of your life. I say that with such confidence, because as a CMD student, it is your innate characteristic to be highly involved on-campus and in the Ithaca community. 

As I enter my final year at Ithaca College and look back on the past three years, I relive the experiences that being a CMD student have provided me.  Since my freshman year I have held leadership positions in several student organizations, as well as on campus wide committees. All my experiences have helped me learn my strengths, my weaknesses, and my true passion for leadership. 

I want to be the first to encourage you to be involved, because college is not just about going to class every day, but it is also about creating a story to share with the students who will come after you.

Being involved on and off campus help you build a legacy that will land you that dream job and is even proven to help you perform better in class. I hope you take advantage of all that being a CMD student has to offer you. I strongly believe that you will all continue that CMD legacy of being some of the best leaders this campus has ever seen.

Again, welcome to Ithaca College and to the CMD experience. Buckle your seatbelts and enjoy the ride of a life time.

--Cornell ‘09

Ithaca College has a great program called The Summer Institute where pre-freshman from various minority cultures come together for a month-long college program. They take classes, explore Ithaca, and get to know each other. I participated in this program the summer prior to my freshman year and it was there I met my best friends.

The final activity that the student's do is the talent show, and I've gotta say... these kids have talent! Whether it was telling hilarious jokes, playing the violin, or singing a remake of Jordin Sparks "No Air", this was an event that I was happy and very excited to work. 

One of the great perks of being an event manager is witnessing the talent that IC offers. There are musical, sporting, and talent events that IC students partake in and event managers get a front row and behind the scenes view! 

It’s not too hard to see that Ithaca isn’t exactly the beachy paradise – Ithaca offers an array of lakes (collectively referred to as the Finger Lakes), beautiful gorges, and green hills (that turn white, come November). But anyway, working with IC After Dark has allowed me to explore my own creative abilities in event planning.

One night at our weekly meetings, we were asked to create our own event ideas that hadn’t been done before. I immediately thought of the event I had created for my After Dark executive board application. My idea entailed interactive games, fried dough, and lots of prizes. Yes, I wanted to bring the boardwalk to Ithaca!

Coming from Atlantic City, New Jersey, I have a lot of experience with all things beach related – beach food, games, entertainment, and culture. I compiled all of this information into an organized, detailed proposal for an event called “A Night at the Boardwalk.”

Impressed with the ideas I had, the executive board chose to follow through with the event I created from scratch and together we developed the event into an extremely fun night for everyone on campus. We had lots of games in different booths, tickets to trade in for prizes, and a nice selection of boardwalk foods including corndogs and salt water taffy.

I was enthralled to see that this event was such a high success – to see my ideas come to life before my eyes was an experience that I will never forget. It goes to show the power that we as students have to make a difference and turn our ideas into reality.

Til next time, 

--Josh