Tashi-Delek/Getty Images Allison Lindsay didn’t dream of being a contact tracer. She came to the State University of New York at New Paltz as an athletic trainer in 2017. But when the college reopened in the midst of the pandemic, she suddenly had a new job. “It’s always difficult not doing what you like to do and are trained to do,” she said. “[But] I personally have found it pretty fulfilling and also think it’s really important to contribute to the university’s effort to protect the students and the community.” Contact tracing and disease intervention is not a new profession. The practice goes back hundreds of years. But this year, contact tracers’ numbers grew by the thousands. On college campuses, they are part of the new, rapidly deployed pandemic workforce.