UNC-Chapel Hill has hired Mark Hoeting for a new $275,000-a-year technology post despite a 2019 finding that he steered more than $5 million in university purchases to a vendor while romantically involved with the company’s sales representative. Hoeting starts October 5 as senior associate chief information officer, a role overseeing important technology services at the university.
The ethics finding traces back to Hoeting’s previous job as vice president for Information Technology and chief information officer at Georgia Tech, a position he resigned from in 2019 with a two-sentence resignation letter, following a University System of Georgia ethics finding into his conduct, according to the Raleigh News & Observer. State investigators concluded Hoeting violated ethics policy by directing more than $5 million in technology purchases toward a vendor whose representative he had dated, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Per the News & Observer, Hoeting’s relationship with the vendor’s sales representative began in 2015, turned romantic in 2016, and lasted about a month in that romantic phase, according to Hoeting’s own account; Georgia Tech’s roughly $5 million in purchases tied to that vendor took place in 2017, and he also recommended the vendor to other university-system and government offices. University System of Georgia investigators were unable to determine whether Georgia Tech overpaid for the equipment it bought.
How the Ethics Case Unfolded
The path to that 2019 finding took years. Internal whistleblowers at Georgia Tech first raised concerns about Hoeting’s vendor relationship through the university’s ethics hotline around 2017, but campus investigators initially found no violation, the AJC’s reporting states. It wasn’t until a second complaint went directly to state system administrators in August 2018 that the matter drew scrutiny; employees had reported noticing unusual vendor access, altered negotiation dynamics, and an absence of the discounts the university typically received.
During the state investigation, Hoeting claimed he had disclosed the personal relationship to his supervisor. Investigators found no records or employee recollections confirming that disclosure ever happened, the AJC reported. Swant himself had already been fired in July 2018 over a separate vendor conflict, after investigators found he sat on the paid board of a university software vendor.
A Rocky Final Stretch at Georgia Tech
Hoeting’s last weeks as Georgia Tech’s CIO were also marked by a separate crisis. He was forced to issue a public apology after a central web application security flaw exposed the personal data of up to 1.3 million Georgia Tech faculty, staff, students, and applicants, according to SecureWorld. That breach was the university’s second major data exposure within a 12-month span. Georgia Tech went on to name former U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and GTRI chief of staff James McGarrah as interim CIO in July 2019; he would support current leaders and help implement campus strategic projects, per EdScoop…