Meet Todd Pfannestiel

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Meet Todd Pfannestiel

Utica College Provost Todd Pfannestiel

UC’s new provost on his long and winding road to Utica and his student-centered plans for the future.

You can learn a lot about Todd Pfannestiel from even the most cursory look around his office. The Godfather is well represented, as are comic books and the Beatles. Autographed photos of Rat Packers like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin are proudly displayed. The walls showcase hockey jerseys and sticks, memorializing his favorite team (the Pittsburgh Penguins) and favorite player (Mario Lemieux).

The mementos have followed Pfannestiel throughout his long academic career, most recently at Clarion University in Pennsylvania, where he spent more than 20 years in a variety of roles and planned to spend several more. Clarion, he explains, felt like home. He and his wife, Aimee, a philosophy professor and Clarion alumna herself, had built strong relationships in the community, and Pfannestiel was an integral part of the University’s growth over the past two decades as a faculty member, then dean, and later provost and vice president for academic affairs.

But starting in 2015, Pfannestiel couldn’t seem to escape news about Utica College. The tuition reset was “on everyone’s lips in academia,” he recalls. “I was at a national conference, and people kept talking about Utica College and this big thing they did with tuition. I thought ‘wow, now that’s a remarkable move.’ I admired an institution that was bold enough to carve out a path and find a way to follow it.”

And then there were the students. The more Pfannestiel learned about UC’s history, mission, and unique student population, namely UC’s many first-generation college students, the more his interest grew. “I saw myself in UC’s students,” he says. “My parents didn’t go to college. They always encouraged me, but I had to find ways to pay for my own education. I had to figure it out.”

Even as he continued his work at Clarion with no real interest in leaving, Pfannestiel kept tabs on UC in the years following the tuition reset, including the addition of new academic programs, facilities, and the growing enrollment. He puts it simply: “I had an interest in Utica College long before they ever expressed an interest in me.”

So when the provost position opened in 2017, Pfannestiel couldn’t help but explore the opportunity. He certainly had the credentials for the job; he earned his Ph.D. from The College of William and Mary and his B.A. from the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. He also completed a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship at Duke University and had spent decades in the classroom as a professor of history. A historian, Pfannestiel has focused his research on American civil liberties and the Vietnam War, among other topics.

In late 2017, after talking it over with Aimee, he applied for the job. A few phone interviews later, Pfannestiel was invited to campus.

“Meeting the people at UC exceeded my wildest expectations,” he recalls “I really value those personal relationships where you can laugh and joke with your colleagues, and I immediately got that sense from the people I met here.”

After his two-day visit, Pfannestiel was sure he’d be getting a job offer—so sure, in fact, that he stopped at the bookstore for a Pioneers ice hockey jersey before heading home.

Fortunately, his instincts were correct. Today, nearly five months into the job, the adjustment period has been “fantastic,” he says. “Everyone has been so welcoming, and not just in the way of ‘oh, you’re the new person, so I’ll be nice.’ I’ve felt a genuine connection with faculty, staff, students, and community members.”

The easy transition has allowed Pfannestiel to dive into projects designed to increase UC’s relevance on both the regional and national stage “as an institution that continues to offer cutting edge academic programs that students seek and employers need,” he says. He’s already working on initiatives to explore new program offerings, reexamine existing ones, and provide expanded internship opportunities to students.

“It’s not so much about fixing problems, but about what we should do next.”

Pfannestiel’s ultimate goal, though? To help UC maintain the air of excitement and change that drew him here in the first place.

“There have been great successes in the past two years,” he says. “We want to be sure these aren’t just two great years we regress from, but instead ask ourselves ‘how do we repeat and grow from those successes? How do we maintain this momentum?’”

“In other words,” he says, smiling, “I want to keep riding the wave.”