Dwayne Pinkney has been appointed the inaugural executive vice president for finance and administration at Indiana University in Bloomington. Dr. Pinkney currently serves as the senior vice president and chief business officer at Virginia Tech. Earlier, he was chief financial officer and senior associate vice chancellor for finance and administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He will begin his new duties in March.
Dr. Pinkney earned a bachelor’s degree in English and journalism from North Carolina A&T State University. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Kimberly Davidson will be the inaugural ombudsperson at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. For the past five years, she was been the ombudsperson at Oberlin College in Ohio. She has been on the staff at Oberlin for 20 years.
Davidson attended Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in English. She holds a master’s degree in African languages, literatures, and linguistics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
DeNeia Thomas has been selected as the new vice president for enrollment and student success at Texas Southern University in Houston. She has been serving as the chief of staff at West Virginia State University.
A native of Kentucky, Dr. Thomas earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Kentucky State University. She earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in educational psychology from the University of Kentucky.
It appears to me that entirely too many of these so-called Black upper echelon administrators literally job hop from one job to another akin to NCAA football coaches. Most of these individuals were literally maintaining the higher education status quo at these HWCUs along with their sub par performance. Case in point, Dwayne Pickney was far removed and out of touch with Black students and professional staff at Virginia Tech. For those who disagree, I challenge you to provide evidence which show otherwise.