With the departure of Dr. Scott Van Loo and Bob Matney, Ashland University has recently announced reorganization changes among the administration.

Van Loo, Vice President of Administration and Strategic Planning, has been at AU since 2011. Prior to being promoted to those positions, he possessed the title of executive vice president and vice president for enrollment management and marketing. 

Van Loo recently accepted and has already begun a new job with Cedarville University, his alma mater, and will be back in the position of enrollment management there.

“It is normal that when a new president comes in, that teams often change but Scott was asked to stay here [upon Campo’s arrival] and help with the transition.” AU Provost Dr. Eun Woo Chang said. “But we were quite surprised that he made this sudden announcement in October to go to his alma mater.”

Matney has served as Executive Director of Information Technology at AU since the fall of 2014. He is now focusing all of his time working for Netpoint Consulting; a networking consulting company he has owned since 2000.

With the departure of these two impactful members of Ashland University, administrative changes needed to be made in order to fill the gaps Chang said. University leaders had to take immediate action in order to fill the space left by both Van Loo and Matney.

Losing Van Loo’s administrative position leaves many open jobs that need to be replaced. And at this time, according to Chang, rather than spending the university’s money to pay a replacement, some of the duties Van Loo possessed will be spread among other administrative departments throughout the university.

The areas of Information Technology and Enrollment Management will now report to the Provost Office. Human Resources will report to the President, while Auxiliary Services and the Columbus Center will be combined with Facilities Management as the new division of Operations and Planning, led by Rick Ewing.

Chang says they hope to use the money saved from not replacing Van Loo this academic year to hire more faculty and staff.

“Instead of replacing this position, we will utilize our resources as a smaller administrative team to cover it, at least until the end of the spring,” Chang said. “This will save the cost and then we wanted to distribute this money to create more positions at the faculty or staff level.”

Despite there being no plans of replacing Van Loo right now, Chang said Matney’s position will need to be filled. The search committee will begin the process of filling in Matney’s position at the end of the spring semester. For the remainder of this academic year, Don Tharp will stand in as Interim Director of Information Technology. Tharp was previously the Executive Director of Learn AU.

In regards to their departure in relation to the recent lawsuit set against the university, Chang says as far as he knows, Van Loo and Matney’s partings have nothing to do with the lawsuit. Both Van Loo and Matney could not be reached for comment.

With the students as their first priority, Chang says the decisions they have made in reorganizing the administration creates the smoothest transition in this situation they were confronted with.

“They have done great things for this institution when we were struggling and they really helped this institution survive,” Chang said. “They wanted to pursue their own careers in different places and I wish them the best of luck. They will be dearly missed, but we have to move on and do our best to find the best solution to move forward.”