Chris Kielt has been appointed vice chancellor and chief information officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Chris Kielt has been appointed vice chancellor and chief information officer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The appointment, effective July 1, was approved today by the University’s Board of Trustees. Kielt had been the interim vice chancellor since last February.
Bruce Carney, executive vice chancellor and provost, announced the move in a campus e-mail message. He consulted with Chancellor Holden Thorp, Chancellor-Elect Carol Folt and other administrative colleagues in recommending Kielt’s appointment. Folt also begins as chancellor on July 1.
Kielt succeeds Larry Conrad, who became the University of California at Berkeley's chief information officer and associate vice chancellor for information technology in February.
“Chris has proven exceptionally effective in his interim role, and I am confident that he has the skills we need to lead and protect the University’s complex information technology infrastructure in the future,” Carney said.
As vice chancellor, Kielt will lead a multi-faceted, campus-wide information technology services (ITS) staff that oversees all administrative and academic computing services and initiatives from telephones to academic support. His office is responsible for network security for the entire campus and oversees ConnectCarolina, the major campus-wide effort to streamline and integrate the computing systems that manage student information, human resources, payroll and finance.
Kielt came to the University last fall as the associate vice chancellor for administrative systems and business transformation from Stony Brook University, where he was the chief information officer. He has more than 25 years of higher education administrative experience, including over two decades at Yale University, where he worked in a variety of roles including deputy chief information officer overseeing ITS application development, client support, systems infrastructure and information security.
He also worked in the private sector with Kreg Corp. and MediFlex Systems Corp. in Connecticut and Georgia, respectively.
Carney cited Kielt’s experience in large-scale enterprise resources planning implementations and project management as a major asset as the University continues to convert the human resources, payroll and finance systems to PeopleSoft, the software supporting ConnectCarolina.
Kielt’s appointment now will help the campus stay on schedule for those implementation plans, Carney said.
A native of Freeport, N.Y., Kielt graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English from Fairfield University and earned a master’s degree in English literature from University of Notre Dame.
Photo URL: http://tinyurl.com/d7nwryo
Contact: Karen Moon, (919) 962-8595, karen_moon@unc.edu