By SUSAN JONES
In a month full of announcements about new leaders at Pitt, likely the most surprising news came in the last paragraph of a community-wide email from Chancellor Joan Gabel on May 30 about a new chief financial officer — that 35-year Pitt veteran David DeJong is apparently out of the senior leadership team.
Gabel’s announcement said Dwayne Pinkney (see related story) has been named executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief financial officer, pending Board of Trustees’ approval, and will start later this summer. This will combine the roles of the CFO and the senior vice chancellor of business and operations — a position DeJong has held for the past four years.
While not saying what DeJong’s future at Pitt is, the chancellor’s email said, “I would also like to recognize and extend my deep, sincere appreciation to Dave DeJong for his leadership of Business and Operations over the last four years. … I am grateful for his partnership and willingness to step up in whatever way was needed, including his work to ensure this integration unfolds smoothly and sets the University up for success.”
She also noted that in his current role and across his service to Pitt, DeJong “has exemplified a shared passion and enthusiasm for higher education that are evident to all who know him.”
A follow-up statement from a Pitt spokesperson said that, “while the SVC for business and operations role will be eliminated, the Business and Operations office and its functions will be integrated into the portfolio of the new executive senior vice chancellor for administration and finance and chief financial officer. This strategic integration is similar to organizational structures at many other colleges and universities.”
The University’s statement said DeJong is, and plans to remain, a member of Pitt’s faculty. He is a tenured professor of economics.
DeJong said he was not able to talk about the transition at this time, but acknowledged he was not informed of the change until the day before it was announced to the University community.
At the April Board of Trustees meeting, Gabel said one of the outcomes of the revised Plan for Pitt’s focus on accountability is to reduce administrative overhead. “It is a strategy of this administration and intention of this administration to operate efficiently, to think about cost management, to reduce the administrative overhead writ large, both centrally and within each of the units of the institution,” Gabel said then.
There is no indication if the move to combine the two executive positions is part of that strategy.
The SVC for Business and Operations currently oversees the offices of Business, Hospitality and Auxiliary Services; Real Estate; Planning, Design & Construction; Public Safety and Emergency Management; Facilities Management and the Office of Sustainability.
Until January, DeJong's office also was over the Office of Human Resources. Gabel moved it back under the chancellor’s umbrella, “to ensure I have a direct line to both employee feedback and HR initiatives that are championing positive change,” she said last year.
DeJong served in the provost’s office for eight years. He was originally appointed in 2010 by former Provost Patricia Beeson as vice provost for academic planning and resources management. He eventually became executive vice provost before being asked to take over the Office of Human Resources in 2019 and later Business and Operations by then-Chancellor Patrick Gallagher.
He helped get the compensation modernization project moving again during his time as HR leader and helped steer HR through remote work and the flexible work policies that COVID pandemic made necessary. He stepped in as acting vice chancellor for Business and Operations in 2020, while keeping his role in HR. In early 2021, he was named to the senior vice chancellor position.
He also is on the steering committee that formed just recently to revise the Campus Master Plan.
DeJong joined the University in 1989 as an assistant professor in the Department of Economics in the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. He was promoted to professor in 2001 and served as department chair from 2006 to 2010.
He also has chaired Pitt’s United Way campaign for the past two years. At the May 9 Senate Council meeting, Gabel thanked DeJong and Kelly Gilliam, the campaign manager, for helping the University exceed last year’s goal by $20,000.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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