By Carla Carlton
Steadfast readers of Bellarmine Magazine know that we regularly feature the “secret lives” of university adjuncts, the highly specialized faculty who teach one or two classes per semester. But many of the university’s full-time faculty and staff also have interesting off-campus pursuits. Beginning with this issue, we are therefore expanding our reach. Do you know someone who has a Secret Life? Tell us at letters@bellarmine.edu.
One way or another, Kyle Rieber is always keeping someone safe.
As Bellarmine’s deputy director of Public Safety for the past seven years, he oversees the department’s operation and supervises 14 officers and six transportation shuttle drivers. The
Office of Public Safety keeps the Bellarmine community secure, handles parking administration, and conducts training sessions on self-defense, CPR/First Aid, and response to active aggressors, among others.
Off campus, he’s making calls at the plate as a high school softball umpire. A church friend who also umpires recruited him in 2019 because a shortage of officials was forcing schools to cancel games. That same friend had convinced Rieber in 2006
to referee high school football games, which he also continues to do.
“I thought, why not? I already knew how to do football, so I figured that would help me with softball, which it did,” he said. “I think the main reason I started umpiring was seeing how hard these student-athletes train for their sports.
Not being able to play because of the shortage of umpires seemed like such a shame, and I wanted to help.”
“I can tell you firsthand that Kyle’s interactions with young people create a positive and lasting interaction." -- Public Safety Director Deborah Fox
During softball season, he’s on the field six days a week; he also umpires during summer ball and for USA Softball, a national nonprofit amateur organization. Football season involves four days per week.
He sees some similarities between his official job and his unofficial one.
“Public Safety’s job is to pay attention to details and always be aware to be prepared and keep everyone safe,” he said. “Officiating is the same. We know the rules, so we pay attention to details, which allows us to control the
game and ensure safety for the student-athletes.”
Deborah Fox, director of the Public Safety Office, said Rieber’s heart is as big as his personality. “Combine the big heart, big personality and big giving spirit, and it should come as no big surprise that he spends the majority of his free
time working or volunteering with young people,” she said. “I can tell you firsthand that Kyle’s interactions with young people create a positive and lasting interaction. Several of them have stopped by the Public Safety Office to
thank him for being supportive and encouraging when they needed it the most.”
Rieber also teaches a taekwondo class on Tuesday evenings in the SuRF Center. He is a Grandmaster instructor in taekwondo, the oldest existing form of martial arts, and holds a 7th-degree black belt. (There are 10 levels.)
Rieber started training in the sport in 1985 after seeing The Karate Kid. “To make sure I gave it my best effort. I signed up for the black belt course, and I ended up loving it,” he said.
He competed in taekwondo during the late 1980s and 1990s, winning his share of championships, before retiring from competition in 2002. But he came out of retirement in 2015 to join the U.S. Taekwondo team in the World Police and Fire Games in Fairfax
County, Virginia, where he won a gold medal in the Kyorugi (sparring) event.
Rieber studied under Grandmaster Kwan Sung Lee, who opened Lee’s Taekwondo in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1975 and passed away in 2002. Rieber operated and taught in a Louisville location of Lee’s from 2004 to 2020, when it closed.
He now teaches exclusively for Bellarmine, although he is still a part of the Lee taekwondo family and continues to test students at a school in Radcliff with Lee’s son Grandmaster Chang Yong Lee.
“I think taekwondo can provide a lot of things—discipline, physical and mental health and a sense of belonging, because taekwondo is a way of life and family,” he said. “Most importantly, it gives you self-confidence, which in
this day of bullying is your best defense. Bullies will not confront someone with self-confidence because they cannot control it.”
So does he consider himself a Mr. Miagi now? “He’s pretty cool,” he said, “but I’m just a guy trying to continue teaching taekwondo the way I was taught by Grandmaster Lee and to continue his legacy.”