Greg Reihman assumed the role of vice provost for Library and Technology Services on Jan. 1, succeeding Bruce Taggart, who has held the position since 2000.
Reihman, who previously worked at Stanford University, was hired by Lehigh in 2004. He spent nine years as director of faculty development, where he focused on innovations in teaching and learning — helping faculty design and implement new forms of pedagogy, instructional technology and digital technology.
“The university wanted to create a position that would be a resource to faculty to improve and enhance teaching and learning,” Reihman said.
In 2013, he took that position a step further, creating the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning (CITL), which brought together various Library and Technology Services groups that support teaching and learning under one umbrella. Reihman became inaugural director for the CITL and associate vice provost of Library and Technology Services that year.
Now, as vice provost, Reihman is the face of Library and Technology Services and responsible for ensuring the organization is working well internally, as well as representing Library and Technology Services across campus and in senior leadership meetings.
Chief Technology Officer Ilena Key said she is excited for Reihman’s leadership and the fresh perspective he will bring.
“Greg (Reihman) has been a strong contributor to the LTS organization for 15 years. He has a good vision for how LTS can support (Lehigh’s) future direction — the Path to Prominence and addition of the College of Health,” she said. “He is going to help support the initiatives of the university.”
Reihman said Library and Technology Services will continue the same approaches that were previously taken, including thinking about how they can redesign spaces, bring in new technology to classrooms and find new faculty partners.
“We’re trying to support the different things happening across the university with the various areas of growth,” Reihman said. “To remain stable as an organization, both LTS and Lehigh as a whole requires us to be constantly adapting.”
Reihman identified a few areas of focus for Library and Technology Services in the near future.
He said enhancing scholarly materials is high on the agenda, as the university moves into new areas of research. With cutting-edge fields of research not requiring the purchase of books anymore, collaboration with various deans and the provost is important in making sure the needs of new disciplines are accounted for in order to support students and faculty in those areas.
Reihman said continuing to advance opportunities for student experiential learning within Library and Technology Services is always a priority.
“LTS is a big employer of students — at our help desk, the TRAC writing fellows, the STARS program — it’s a great opportunity for students to get hands-on working experience with really well-qualified mentors,” Reihman said. “Keeping that program alive and robust is really important to me.”
Reihman said one of his proudest achievements was co-creating the TRAC program, which trains a group of about 75 undergraduate students to be writing fellows. The students work with faculty to improve writing assignments and act as peer tutors.
He also takes pride in having enabled various arms of Library and Technology Services including librarians, digital technologists and those in digital scholarship to work more closely.
University librarian Boaz Nadav-Manes said that it is unusual to find libraries and technology placed under the same organization.
“For me, it was a very appealing proposition when I came to work here that technology and libraries are so aligned in terms of research and vision, more so than in other places,” Nadav-Manes said. “Greg knows libraries very well and is a nice person to work with, which is an asset for a leader in this complex organization.”
Reihman said Library and Technology Services must remain responsive to advances in technology, especially in communication and collaboration tools, and take stock of opportunities to enhance face-to-face classes with some online teaching elements, along with pure online teaching.
He believes, however, that all of it is secondary to what makes Lehigh great — faculty-student interactions.
“We want to build an ecosystem that supports what’s best about faculty student interaction — whether that’s in a classroom, an online environment or hybrid-online face to face environment,” Reihman said.
Despite broad general changes, Reihman said looking ahead, the core mission of Library and Technology Services will not change.
He said the organization will continue to support teaching, research, service and the business of the university.
“At this point, there’s not much that’s radically different. That might sound boring, but it’s just because we’ve been continually making radical changes,” Reihman said. “As an organization, for us to stay vibrant, we’re always thinking about what we need to do better. Bruce Taggart has been a great mentor in that area. He’s always thinking about not just settling for what we’ve done now, but what is the next thing we can do.”
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