Missouri Western State University announced the new Interim Vice President for Finance and Administrative as Ron Olinger. After serving as MWSU’s Vice President for Financial Planning and Administration from 2002 to 2008, he is back to assist the board until a permanent replacement for Darrel Morrison is found.
Morrison served his last day on March 17, the Friday before spring break. Morrison served as Vice President for Finance and Administration and had mixed feelings about his departure.
“Over the past four years this university has been the focal point of my life,” Morrison said. “The people here, the students, the staff, faculty work so closely with many of them during my time here so my emotions are mixed in departing. I’m sad on one hand and excited on the other that I’ll be getting closer to family.”
Having worked with the university before, Olinger is familiar with how things are run. He also recognizes that this time around may be a little different because of some new faces.
“I recently retired from Benedictine College where I was CFO for 14 years,” Olinger said. “Prior to that I was at Missouri Western. Now, there’s a different administration in place, different president, a different provost, an entirely different cabinet from when I was here 2002-2008. But, there’s a lot of the same employees and the structure is still similar so it’s good to be back.”
Missouri Western has new projects coming up. One of those is the construction of the Convergent Technology Alliance Center (CATAC). While Olinger is seated as Interim V.P., he will oversee different aspects of progress.
“I think there are a couple things that are looming,” Olinger said. “One trying to finalize the budget for next year. We’re looking at starting the CTAC construction project, which is a joint venture in industrial manufacturing technology training.”
While overseeing new projects, Olinger’s part is to keep things in line.
“My role here is to just kind of keep things going and business as usual,” Olinger said. “So that there’s leadership in place while they do a search for the permanent vice president.”
As former V.P., Morrison also had a hand in a lot of Missouri Western projects.
“The university has had some accomplishments over the past few years,” Morrison said. “Anytime something’s accomplished it’s not by one person. I think it's because of a multitude of people working together and so we have done a lot of things. We’ve updated a lot of old facilities around the old campus from residents halls to our streets and parking lots combined effort there. It has been a positive step forward.”
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