SOM’s Sara Reiter embraces her next chapter after 33 years of guiding Binghamton students
Accounting Professor Sara Reiter has held many distinguished roles during her career in Binghamton University's School of Management
When asked why now is the right time for her to retire, after 33 years at the School of Management, Professor Sara Reiter admits she’s thought carefully about the numbers.
She does, after all, teach accounting.
“People who are in their 70s — and I have very good health — often feel like people in their 50s,” she says. “There really isn’t all that much difference, except people in their 50s have many, many more years ahead of them. If I want to do more traveling and pursuing my hobbies, I need to do it.”
Since joining the SOM faculty in 1990, Reiter has guided countless students through the facts and figures of the accounting profession, including the ethical questions that managers can face in the corporate world. In 2022, Poets & Quants named her among the nation’s Top 50 Undergraduate Business Professors.
Her teaching philosophy is a straightforward and practical one: “Some students have a lot of confidence and don’t need much handholding. Others don’t have a lot of confidence, and they need a lot more reassurance and structure to make things work for them. You have to try to support all of the different learning styles and maturity levels of students, so they all feel like they can do it.”
Watching the campus blossom
Reiter grew up in Corning, N.Y. and attended Cornell University for a degree in English literature — but working as a bookkeeper for a small company diverted her interest. She decided to pursue accountancy at the University of Missouri, where she earned her MS and PhD. She spent a decade as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois and Indiana University, but she returned to upstate New York when a faculty position opened at SOM.
“I really like it here at Binghamton. It’s the perfect size because you can be really involved in the University,” she says. “A school like Binghamton really does belong to the faculty, big enough to do research but small enough to know everybody.”
Over Reiter’s three-decade career at Binghamton, SOM — and the University in general — grew in student enrollment, rose in key rankings and attracted numerous accolades. She believes that Binghamton always has aspired to loftier heights and is finally catching up with its aspirations.
“We’ve always had great relationships with the New York City firms, tremendous hiring rates and very successful graduates,” she says. “It’s a matter of now getting recognition for what has already been there for 30 years.”
Beyond Wall Street
During her time at SOM, Reiter’s research examined various facets of bonds and pensions as well as concerns with ethics, professionalism and the environment. She’s more interested in how accounting practices shape society rather than how they affect the stock market.
“The idea that business is completely separate from the world of ethics is rather old-fashioned,” she says. “The controversies around environmental, social and governance reporting are strange politically, where some people are saying they want to forbid state pension systems from investing in any ESG [environmental, social and governance] fund. ESG concerns have a lot to do with the long-term health as opposed to the two-month health of corporations. How can you ignore how corporations are handling their supply chain if they’re likely to get kicked out of all the countries they’re in?”
Reiter’s career also has included leadership positions in the Binghamton University Faculty Senate, as well as serving as a representative on SUNY’s University Faculty Senate. She also helped establish SOM’s Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee.
In 2016, Reiter’s service was recognized with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award.
Looking ahead
Over the summer, Reiter led what she sees as her final class at SOM, although she doesn’t rule out teaching again in the future. Her retirement plans include traveling and training border collies to compete in herding, obedience and agility competitions. Sometimes she serves as a herding judge for the American Kennel Club and the American Herding Breeds Association.
She lends her accounting skills as a board member and treasurer for the SusqueNango Kennel Club and the Australian Cattle Dog Club of America Inc., and she is also a member of the North East Border Collie Association and the Herding Association of Central New York.
At home, she currently has a Rottweiler and four border collies, including a 2-year-old that she sees as her retirement project: “I imported him from Ireland in January, because I knew I was retiring.”
Reiter is also looking forward to simple pleasures like reading a book or relaxing without worrying about assignments to grade.
“I really want to explore getting back into things that I put aside maybe 50 years ago in order to pursue my career goals,” she says.