Tompkins Cortland names new administrator in charge

Late last month, Tompkins Cortland Community College announced that it has named Paul Reifenheiser, previous provost and vice president of academic affairs, as the new administrator in charge (AIC) while the college works to find a new president. The previous president, Orinthia Montague, stepped down earlier this year.

Reifenheiser has been the provost and vice president of academic affairs since he started working at Tompkins Cortland in 2018. Prior to joining Tompkins Cortland, he worked for Sullivan Community College in Sullivan County for 15 years, where he taught and held administrative roles like division chair and interim vice president for academic and student affairs.

Reifenheiser’s educational background is far-reaching. He earned his bachelor’s in English from Villanova University, near Philadelphia, his master’s in English from St. John’s University in New York City and his doctorate in English and American literature and critical theory from Florida State University. And while his main focus was English, he started at Villanova majoring in business.

“I thought, ‘OK, my goal in life is to, I guess, go into business, do well, make money,’” he said. “My father was in marketing, so I thought this would be a good path to go down. And I got to the classes and really found they weren’t for me. But the classes that I really enjoyed were my English classes, and I had always done that throughout high school, so in my sophomore year, I switched over to English. And everything was better for me since … I did that. I just was like, ‘OK, great. This is the right path for me.’”

That love for English eventually brought him to Sullivan, where he started as an English professor. While there, he recommended to the chair of his department that the college should start a formalized writing program. And, to Reifenheiser’s surprise, his department head said, “You’re absolutely right. Go do it.”

“And I was like, ‘What are you talking about? I wasn’t saying I would do this. I was saying bring somebody in to do this,’” Reifenheiser said. “But it was actually the best thing that ever happened to me because I worked on that, became our reading program administrator and then found that I liked that skill set.”

After his department chair left, Reifenheiser took over as the new department head, and after his boss, the vice president of academic and student affairs, stepped down, he took up that position temporarily.

“I love teaching, but I also loved helping faculty and staff,” he said. “I really like having that ability to focus on how the college is doing as a whole, as opposed to just thinking about what’s happening in a specific classroom. So, just interesting little steps each step of the way.”

As far as his journey to Tompkins Cortland, Reifenheiser said that he had never visited the county prior to applying to the college, so when he came to Ithaca for the campus interview, he was “blown away.”

“It was the night before the campus interview, and I went and I stopped and I had some dinner on The Commons,” he said. “I just kind of took a walk and I was looking at a map. I’m like, ‘OK, this thing looks interesting.’ And I was on the Cascadilla Gorge trail. … And I remember just walking through it, and I called my wife. I’m like, ‘What is this? There’s this great town, and then there’s these beautiful gorges 400 yards away. Who does this?’”

While he was only in town for a short period of time, he left town hoping he’d get accepted. Fortunately, he did.

When Reifenheiser started at Tompkins Cortland, the campus had just completed its accreditation through the SUNY system, and the accreditors provided administrators with some suggestions on ways to improve campus offerings.

“I was also trying hard to be respectful of the campus culture itself and not mess with that culture too much because I think it’s a good one,” he said. “So, it was a lot going on. But I think we made really enormous progress in our ability to do some of our long-term planning because that’s really what we started doing — let’s think about who we are as an institution, let’s do the long-term planning. And that’s been happening across the whole campus, not just in the academic area.”

In his first year or so at Tompkins Cortland, Reifenheiser said the biggest challenge was getting to know people, both on and off campus.

“It’s very difficult when administrators come in with that mentality … of, ‘Hey, I’m perfect. And I know all the answers to all your problems. And I’m going to redo everything for you,’” he said. “I think that is a lose-lose proposition for everybody. And so, it’s far better to listen to people and gain trust from people so that then they can give you honest and earnest feedback and honest and earnest criticism. And so, that was a challenge, but it was a really good challenge and something that I think was really helpful.”

Of course, the pandemic hit only a couple of years into Reifenheiser’s tenure, creating plenty of new challenges for him and others in administration. Tompkins Weekly has followed many of the ways Tompkins Cortland has dealt with the pandemic (see t.ly/aoDu), and Reifenheiser said the changes the campus made were ultimately beneficial for students, particularly offering more ways for students to learn like virtual offerings.

“It was difficult for folks to do, but it was really rewarding for a lot of students,” he said. “And now, we’re finding that a lot of the things that we implemented and we’re working on gives great flexibility for students and has made it easier for them now to be able to set up a schedule or to be able to take advantage of being able to work at the same time that they’re going to school. So, that flexibility, I think, has been really important.”

When Montague stepped down earlier this year and the Board of Trustees put out a call for an AIC, Reifenheiser, much like he did back at Sullivan, stepped up.

“My job is not to come in and reinvent everything at the college,” he said. “My job is not to change all that, to go in and make radical changes. That would just be utterly foolish. It’s really to trust in the team that we have. We have a great administrative team. We really, really do.”

Reifenheiser’s biggest focus will be helping Tompkins Cortland continue to navigate the pandemic, particularly as the Delta variant continues to cause COVID-19 cases to spike. Tompkins Cortland is working to get as many of its staff, faculty and students vaccinated as possible and has implemented a mask mandate as a further safety measure.

Outside of pandemic work, Reifenheiser said the campus has also been working to introduce more microcredentials, helping students to earn a few credits rather than the full 60, which could help boost their skill set and build their resume.

Overall, Reifenheiser said he’s enjoyed his time at Tompkins Cortland so far, and he’s looking forward to what this new role has in store for him.

“I love working here,” he said. “I’m proud to work here. And I love trumpeting all the great work that we do.”

To learn more about Tompkins Cortland’s COVID-19 policies, visit tompkinscortland.edu/college-info/covid-19-policies-and-updates.