Michael Cummings, Copy Editor
cummings@grinnell.edu
Over winter break, President Raynard Kington wrote a special campus memo that Vice President for Communications Jim Reische will be leaving his position at the College effective on March 21.
Reische, who first came to Grinnell in 2011, dedicated the four years he has spent at Grinnell to making needed improvements to the College.
“The resulting improvements [from Reische’s work] in our financial sustainability were central to the Trustees’ October 2015 vote continuing our need-blind policies,” Kington wrote in the memo.
Reische was selected Vice President for Communications at Grinnell during a nationwide search in 2012. Previously, the same person headed the Communications department and the Development and Alumni Relations department, but the office of Vice President of Communications role was established as part of a growing trend among colleges across the country.
Reische has accepted a position as the Chief Communications Officer for St. John’s College in Annapolis, Md., a small liberal arts college dedicated to the reading of the Great Books of Western Civilization. Reische cited family as the main reason for his move.
“My parents, who live in New Hampshire, are getting older,” Reische said. “I want to be able to spend some time with them. It’s not easy to get back and forth from Iowa to New Hampshire. Our daughter is at college in Pennsylvania … I want to be closer to people who I want to be able to see.”
Reische said he has a hard time picking out what he will miss the most about Grinnell.
“One of the things I really like about Grinnell is the incredible intellectual vibrancy,” Reische said. “Anybody’s willing to try anything, and people are willing to discuss and debate and really engage at a really intense level, and so that’s something that I’ve loved.”
He added that he especially values the relationships he has formed in his time here.
“I really have a lot of good friendships with people on campus, and not just administrators but faculty and staff and students, which is a pretty rare thing in my world.”
