An unusual sequence of events has now led to one job being filled at UNC – Chapel Hill and yet more bumps in the road to recovery for the embattled University of Louisville.
Jonathan Pruitt will begin serving as the vice chancellor for finance and operations at UNC – Chapel Hill on January 29, according to a message from Provost Bob Blouin on Tuesday, January 16. Pruitt is coming to the Chapel Hill campus from the UNC System, where he served as chief financial officer.
“We are extremely fortunate to be able to fill this critical position quickly and with someone who is already intimately familiar with the University and its operations, as well as the state budget process,” Blouin wrote when announcing the hire.
Pruitt will be tasked with helping implement the university’s Blueprint for Next, the recently adopted strategic framework for the campus, in addition to duties overseeing “campus-wide financial planning and budgeting; treasury and risk management; facilities planning, construction and operations; real estate development; purchasing; public safety; campus enterprises; environmental health and safety; and energy services.”
Pruitt has been with the UNC System since 2006. He received his bachelor of arts degree from Centre College and his master of public administration degree from the University of Kentucky, according to UNC – Chapel Hill.
Blouin wrote that Pruitt’s “existing relationship with members of the UNC System and the state legislature will ensure a smooth transition into his new role.”
Pruitt is replacing Matt Fajack, who Chancellor Carol Folt announced on Friday, January 12, would be leaving the university.
Fajack has been at UNC since 2014, and his move to take over as vice president for financial affairs at the University of Alabama opened the job on the Chapel Hill campus for Pruitt. But Fajack’s departure for Alabama and Pruitt’s new position at UNC has consequences for another institution.
The University of Louisville now has to reinitiate its search for a new chief financial officer, since Pruitt was offered and subsequently accepted the job in late 2017. His official start date was slated for January 16, according to a release from Louisville announcing his hire.
Louisville has been searching for a permanent CFO since Harlan Sands left the university in January 2017. A period of high turnover and multiple investigations related to embezzlement and athletic scandals led Louisville TV station WDRB to describe the situation as “a time when the university faces big financial challenges and a lack of permanent leaders at the top.”
James Ramsey began serving as the university’s president in 2002 and resigned in July 2016 after some university officials were imprisoned on fraud and embezzlement charges and the university’s basketball program was investigated by the NCAA for allegedly hiring strippers during recruiting visits for high school prospects.
Neville Pinto served as acting president at Louisville until taking over as president of the University of Cincinnati in February 2017. Gregory Postel has been serving as the interim president at Louisville since January 2017.
Hall of Fame men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino and athletics director Tom Jurich were fired in 2017 amid an FBI investigation that shoe companies were funneling money to potential Louisville recruits.
Postel had said he was “thrilled to be able to bring someone with Mr. Pruitt’s credentials to the university,” when announcing that Pruitt would take over as CFO last November, according to The [Louisville] Courier-Journal. With his new hire’s pivot to UNC, Postel had to inform the university’s Board of Trustees late last week that Pruitt, a Kentucky native, would not be taking the job.
“This news obviously is disappointing,” Postel said in an email, according to WDRB.
Comments on Chapelboro are moderated according to our Community Guidelines