Another key player in the university's upcoming financial campaign announced his resignation this week.
Jason Petrovich '93, executive director of Development and current interim vice president of Development, confirmed that he will leave DePauw at the end of the calendar year to take a position at Valparaiso University in northern Indiana.
Petrovich is the second top administrator on the Advancement staff to resign from the university in the past two months. Marcia Latta announced in early September she was leaving the position of vice president for Advancement at the end of the calendar year.
Latta, who lives in Ohio and commutes weekly to Greencastle, cited family reasons. She will slowly phase out her duties as vice president over the remainder of the semester.
The resignations come at a time when the university is in the quiet phase of a major financial campaign. The largest campaign since 1992, the funds collected through donors will go towards capital projects on campus, raising money for student scholarships and increasing assets to erase the university's budget deficit.
Petrovich will begin his new position as the associate vice president for Advancement in January 2013 and will join his former colleague, Lisa Hollander, Valporaiso's vice president for Institutional Advancement. Petrovich said Hollander, who worked at DePauw for 16 years, most recently as vice president for resource planning and senior philanthropic advisor, reached out to him for the position. He described his new role as a "great career opportunity."
He said the decision to leave was one he made with his wife and that no conflict with the university led to his decision.
President Brian Casey said the university is still in the middle of a search for the new vice president of administration to replace Latta.
"I always thought the search would take several months," Casey said.
He said the person selected will choose the replacement for Petrovich's current position.
Casey said Petrovich's responsibilities will be split up throughout the division until a new candidate is selected.
Petrovich said he never had discussions with Casey or anyone else in the administration about whether he might have been a candidate for Latta's position. Casey declined to discuss potential candidates for the position.
When asked if the loss of Petrovich will slow down the university's campaign, both Casey and Petrovich said that no single person makes the campaign, but that it is a total effort by the department and administration.