FAYETTEVILLE : Pontious hired for UA fundraising post
Posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008
The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville has filled a key fundraising position that had been vacant for nearly a year.
Campus officials hired Bruce E. Pontious as associate vice chancellor for university development, they announced Monday.
The position was last held permanently by Sandy Edwards, who left the university Aug. 31, 2007, for the associate director’s job at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.
Pontious, 58, will oversee all units of the university development office when he starts the new job Sept. 15. His responsibilities will include annual giving, corporation and foundation relations, development research, gift services, information services and planned giving.
Brad Choate, UA’s vice chancellor for university advancement, said Pontious is recognized nationally as one of the best in the field.
Pontious will earn a $ 190, 000 annual salary, which will be paid entirely out of private funds from the University of Arkansas Foundation Inc., said UA spokesman Steve Voorhies.
Since 1987, Pontious has worked for The Ohio State University, most recently in a development job entitled assistant vice president for professional colleges / units and regional programs. Since taking that position in 2005, he led those areas in raising more than $ 345 million through 2007, or roughly 40 percent of the university’s fundraising activity, according to a UA news release.
While Ohio State’s assistant to the vice president for health sciences, Pontious led a $ 190 million campaign for Ohio State’s health service entities that exceeded the original goal by $ 80 million, raising $ 270 million as part of the university’s overall, five-year, $ 1 billion campaign that ended in 2000.
The key things that attracted him to UA included “dynamic leadership,” Pontious said in a telephone interview Monday.
“It was just very compelling to me that there was just a host of great, high-caliber leadership,” he said. “Particularly Chancellor Gearhart, whom I’ve known for quite some time, and Brad Choate.” Pontious earned a bachelor’s degree from Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio, and has completed course work toward a master of education degree.
The Fayetteville campus’s last major fundraising effort was the Campaign for the 21 st Century, which raised $ 1. 046 billion between July 1998 and June 2005. It was headed by the university’s then-vice chancellor for university advancement, G. David Gearhart, who succeeded John A. White as chancellor July 1.
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