01/23/2018
Shaunna Arnold-Plank, who joined the College April 12 as interim general manager for the Lynne Parks ’68 SUNY Cortland Alumni House, accepted an appointment to the permanent general manager position on Dec. 21.
The unique position merges event planning, sales, customer service, alumni engagement and hospitality. Arnold-Plank reports to Erin Boylan, executive director of alumni engagement.
“It combines everything I enjoy,” she said.
“There’s always something new to do and figure out and work on. That’s what makes it fun and exciting. And I really, really like the staff here and the people I work with on College Hill, as well. It’s a really good match of the people I work with, the people who come to the house on a constant basis, the SUNY Cortland Alumni Association Board of Directors house committee folks. It’s just a good group of people.
Arnold-Plank previously worked at the Holiday Inn Express in Syracuse, N.Y. as general manager. Before that, she was associate director for alumni and parent relations at SUNY Oswego. She has worked for Marriott and Days Inn and was an event manager at the OnCenter in Syracuse, planning a number of events from small business workshops to concerts, sporting events and tradeshows.
Her primary interest is hospitality but Arnold-Plank also has spent 13 years in higher education. She first held a teaching position at Bryant & Stratton College in their hospitality program and then was promoted to a subject area coordinator. Later she was given the opportunity for the role of associate director of career services, working with students in the hospitality field and the medical field to help them find internships and job placement.
She gained her first taste of the hospitality field working as an intern at Walt Disney World while she was a student at Herkimer Community College.
“It was a whole mix of things, food and customer service,” Arnold-Plank said. “It was a lot of fun. It’s probably the one thing that made me realize what I wanted to do when I grew up, so I recommend it for college students. It’s so eye-opening; it’s in with people from all over the world. It’s an international experience.”
She later earned her Bachelor of Science in Hospitality and Tourism Management from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Master of Science in Business and Marketing Education at SUNY Oswego.
She’s glad to join SUNY Cortland.
“This is a great college and I wanted to come work here,” Arnold-Plank said. She is very familiar with the College through her nephew, Zachary Zufelt ’11.
Arnold-Plank is working on getting more involved with students and getting more of them to come down the hill to the Parks Alumni House.
“We’re also trying to get people in the community more involved, too,” she said. Recently, the house hosted its first “Sip-and-Paint” and staff are working with the Cortland Flower Shop to do a “Build a Garden” event on Feb. 1.
“We’re going to do our first blood drive soon, for anybody who wants to come,” she said. “I’m hoping it will get people interested who’ve probably never been to the house before to come see what’s here. They can see the house, they can ask questions about the house.”
She will continue to organize the events that have been planned in the past, such as weddings, baby showers, bridal showers and community events such as Harvest of Gold fundraiser for the Cortland Regional Medical Center.
“We are really trying to do more things to get the students down here, the community here, to get more exposure,” Arnold-Plank said. “That’s going to be the biggest goal for us.”
She will oversee house maintenance, repair and upgrade projects.
Many private universities have a residential alumni house, but there are relatively few in SUNY.
“Honestly, I think the Parks Alumni House is a special place. We have the opportunity to provide lodging as well as event space for our alumni, faculty, staff, students and Cortland community. It’s a place for people to call home and place to come back to.”
“As interim I enjoyed working at the house,” she said. “We came up with some new programs and we have all come together to be a great and complete staff. I look forward to the next few years.”