The Web IC Weaves

The Web IC Weaves

More than 70,000 alumni, students, faculty, and friends form the connective tissue of Ithaca College-showing up for one another by choosing to stay connected long after their time on campus.

All alumni who leave IC carry something of Ithaca with them. Sometimes it's easy to name-a mentor's advice, a moment of clarity in a classroom, the way the light hits Cayuga Lake on an early-morning walk to class. Other times, it's only understood later, when life begins to stretch out in new and unpredictable directions.

The IC network includes Grammy winners and authors,CEOs and entrepreneurs, scientists and teachers. They are people who volunteer, coach, juggle work and family, and show resiliency after a setback. They've navigated marriages and divorces, illnesses and recoveries, promotions and layoffs. They've fallen in love, moved across the country, and come home again. What knits them together is a connection-one that seems to linger long after their tassels are turned. It shows up when two strangers realize they both lived in the Towers or when old roommates still text each other through life's celebrations and complications. It shows up in the mentorships that begin with a networking email and turn into years of guidance. It shows up in business partnerships that trace their origins back to a first-year seminar or a shared table in the library.

And then there is Ithaca itself-the waterfalls, the Commons, the small businesses, the artists, the rhythm of the town that lives alongside the college. Some alumni return to it. Others never leave it. Many carry it with them in ways they don't fully recognize until they're far from it.

This is a story that unfolds quietly, year after year. It'snot a tidy narrative but a collective account, a dynamicweb made up of people whose lives continue to intersectlong after they've left South Hill.

The web woven by Diane Cohen '87 seems to cover all of Tompkins County. Any Ithaca resident has likely intersected with Finger Lakes ReUse, a community reuse center where people can take donations of what they no longer need and buy what they do. Cohen is one of its creators and the chief executive director of the business. Countless IC students and their parents have visited the store to outfit their apartments or to donate what they no longer need after graduation.

Cohen was an art major, but her politics minor shows up most clearly in her work today. She pursued the minor because she said she "wanted to understand how the world worked." She says the community work she does now has everything to do with what she learned on campus, particularly in classes taught by emerita politics professor Zillah Eisenstein and retired philosophy-religion professor Linda Finlay, whom Cohen credits with sparking her curiosity.

The latticework of Cohen's web stretches to campus as well. IC's field hockey team volunteers at Finger Lakes ReUse annually to help move the business's mountain of inventory. Scott Doyle '98, IC's director of energy management and sustainability, said, "Diane and ReUse really help us shape our on-campus resource for students to drop off or pick up unwanted but still usable items. She's a fantastic resource, as is Finger Lakes ReUse."

In 2001, Cohen had landed a job at Significant Elements, an architectural salvage warehouse run by Historic Ithaca that began in a barn 30 years ago with the slogan, "Recycling at its best." There, Cohen saw the constant supply and demand for reused materials and goods. Tompkins County also had interest in establishing a reuse center. Cohen worked with Mark Darling '97, another IC alumnus who became the founding board president of the incorporated Finger Lakes ReUse in 2007.

Robin Elliott '13, a documentary studies and production major at IC, met Cohen through the shared experience of working in the service industry prior to working at ReUse. They also shared an interest in social and economic justice. As Cohen said, "I am really interested in leaving the world a little better than I found it." In 2016, Elliott joined Cohen at Finger Lakes ReUse as its chief operations officer.

After 10 years working together, Robin and Diane, two IC graduates, continue to serve the community where they went to college, working together to leave the world a little better than they found it.

Three decades later, the friends' time-tested web spreads across New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. They originally traveled to Ithaca for reunions, but their next reunion is planned for this fall in New York City for the Cortaca Jug game at Yankee Stadium. "It's nice to know that all those memories and friendships we built are still just as strong. If any one of us needed something serious, we'd be there for each other in a heartbeat," Bellone said.

Mentorship is another thread in the IC alumni web, and Bellone's story highlights it as well. Three of the physical therapists at Austin Physical Therapy Center are Ithaca College graduates. For Bellone, the web is interconnected and long standing. The college has shaped her into a friend, a boss, a community member, and a mentor. "As much as you give, it comes back twice as much," she reflected.

Renee Solano and Scott Connolly '96 met during their first year at Ithaca College, bonding over their shared love of athletics in a "GIPPE" (general instructional program in physical education) course. Both were athletes-Renee, a walk-on in women's lacrosse, and Scott, a football player and wrestler-but the community and opportunities at IC were what shaped the foundation of their personal and professional lives.

Renee arrived on campus thinking she was done with competitive sports but by her second semester realized she missed it. So she sought out every IC coach for a walk-on spot. Andrea Golden, then the women's lacrosse coach, needed a goalie-and Renee, who had been a high school softball catcher, found her defensive skills transferable. Her decision to play lacrosse marked the start of a journey defined by determination, adaptability, and commitment. Beyond lacrosse, Renee discovered a web of other communities where she felt welcomed and supported, from contributing to The Ithacan and broadcasting on ICTV to working in Campus Center. Her sense of belonging became a guiding principle.

Scott and Renee's connection to IC continues through their children, with their firstborn, Jake, graduating in 2025, and he was an assistant coach for the 2025 season. Both Scott and Jake are the only "father-son" duo to be named first-team all-Americans in IC football history, and Scott was inducted into the IC Athletic Hall of Fame. Scott's friend, Rob, has traveled for all of Jake's games as well. For years, weekends were spent cheering at Bomber games, surrounded by friends, family, and a tight-knit community that spans generations and events of all kinds. 

Renee, a Long Island native, grew up appreciating diversity in community: diversity of thought, diversity of culture, diversity of backgrounds. The diversity she was exposed to shaped her life with Scott, which explains how the two have friends from all different walks of life. Renee confirmed: "You have to surround yourself with people that have shared values, and I think we were able to do that at Ithaca, but also be exposed to others' opinions, thoughts, cultures, and backgrounds."

For the Connollys, Ithaca College is more than an alma mater-it is a web of belonging, commitment, and lifelong connection, not only from the time they were on South Hill but also now with their extended Bomber family through the strong relationships forged during Jake's college years. It's where life lessons of determination, community, and authenticity grew, shaping the values they have lived by and passed on to their children.

The IC community is best summed up in Scott's remarks at his IC Athletic Hall of Fame induction ceremony: "Even if I don't know you, say you're a Bomber, and I'm here for you. We'll do whatever we can for you. We'll give our shirt off our back for you. Whatever you need. And the best thing is, there's thousands and thousands and thousands of people just like me out there. So I'm not the only one, you know, and that's the power of being a Bomber."

When Suzanne Smith Jablonski '92 thinks about Ithaca College, she doesn't start with a career milestone or a favorite class. She goes straight to Terrace 12-the hallway where she met Bill Jablonski '93, the fellow student who would become her husband. "It's our origin story," she said with a smile. "Ithaca College gave me the beautiful life that I have."

That hallway meeting turned into dating at 19, and now, more than three decades later, a marriage, a child, and a life anchored in the very town where they first crossed paths. For Smith Jablonski, that single hallway connection wove the first strand of an alumni web that has grown, stretched, and looped back into her life in ways she never expected.

Even as young professionals living in New York and New Jersey through the 1990s, Suzanne and Bill couldn't stay away from Ithaca. If a road trip lasted longer than a few days, they found themselves steering north-back to the gorges, the Commons, and the familiar comfort. "It always felt like home base," Smith Jablonski said.

hat recognition opened the next major chapter of her life. And in that chapter, Smith Jablonski discovered how powerful her alumni web could really be. When she talks about her two decades at the Tompkins County Public Library Foundation, she talks about students-Ithaca College students-more than 25 of them over the years who were with her as interns, volunteers, or work-study employees. "I worked almost exclusively with IC students," she said. "They were eager, dedicated, curious. They showed up on time. They asked great questions. They went above and beyond."

What surprised her the most, perhaps, was how the experience changed her. Early on, fresh out of graduate school, she felt only a few steps ahead of the students she supervised. She didn't think of herself as a mentor. But the more years that passed, the clearer her role became. "I realized the best thing I could do was help them see the big picture," she said. "Whatever task they were doing, I'd explain why it mattered. I wanted them to understand how their work fit into the whole."

Some of those students would get their first jobs because of their work with Smith Jablonski. Many stayed connected-through updates, families, careers launched from a foundation built in her office. "That was probably my favorite part of the job," Smith Jablonski said. "Those relationships enriched my life more than I realized at the time."

When Smith Jablonski eventually left the library foundation, she found herself in a new phase of the alumni web-no longer the hands-on mentor but the connector behind the scenes. She watched her former colleagues take over the student mentorship role, and she shifted into something more advisory, more strategic: "It felt like passing the baton, another full-circle moment."

Today, Smith Jablonski is the executive director of the Downtown Ithaca Local Development Corporation, a nonprofit that owns the new Ithaca Downtown Conference Center. And even here, her alumni connections surface.

Former dean of the Park School who was then a professor of strategic communication as well as an IC alumna, Diane Gayeski '74 partnered with Smith Jablonski's organization in fall 2024 for Gayeski's Consulting Lab class, where a small team of students developed a white paper on how small city conference centers can best market themselves. The collaboration ensued because of an IC connection-Smith Jablonski had also been a student of Gayeski's-and together she and Gayeski created an opportunity for IC students to meet a community need. "That's the alumni web in action," Smith Jablonski said. "Connections creating opportunities."

Ask Smith Jablonski how she sees her role as an alumna today, and the answer comes easily. She sees herself as a bridge-between the college and the community, between students and real-world experience, between IC programs and local partners. "If there's ever a way I can help connect the college to the community, I want to do that," she said. "Sometimes all it takes is putting people in the same room."

For someone whose own life was shaped by a chance hallway encounter in an IC residence hall, perhaps it's no surprise she has spent years strengthening the very web that continues to hold her: "Ithaca College has shown up for me in so many ways," Smith Jablonski said. "And I hope, in my own ways, I've shown up for it, too."

There is no single way to describe what it means to be part of the Ithaca College alumni web-and maybe that's the point. It isn't defined by job titles or accolades, though there are plenty of those. It isn't limited by geography. It stretches across the country and far beyond. What holds it together is something quieter and more enduring: a willingness to show up for one another, again and again, in ways that matter.

You see the alumni web when a small-town nonprofit grows because an alumnus recognized a community need; when a decades-old text chain becomes a lifeline through life's hard moments; when a hall-of-famer offers help to any Bomber who might need it; when a former intern becomes a colleague, and a colleague becomes a partner in shaping a stronger local community. You see it in the people who stayed in Ithaca, the people who returned to it, and the people who carry its imprint every place they go.

These are individual stories, yes. But together, they form something larger: a living testament to what happens when a college becomes a community and a community becomes a lifelong web of belonging, connection, and care.