A long-time Vincennes University employee is set to retire this year.
Vice President of Financial Services and Chief Finance Officer Timothy Eaton at the end of this school year will retire after more than 30 years of employment.
Eaton started at the university in 1989 as a staff accountant then advanced to director of business services in 1997.
In 2000, Eaton became the budget director, then the associate vice president of financial services in 2019 before taking on his current role in 2021.
Eaton holds a bachelor’s degree in finance from Indiana University and an MBA from Ball State University.
“It’s been a long career here,” Eaton said. “I am a native of Vincennes so it’s always nice to make a career in your hometown, at least it was for me.”
According to Dr. Chuck Johnson, president of VU, “Tim has significantly contributed to VU’s growth and financial health.”
Throughout his career, Eaton has been able to use his “extensive knowledge” of the university’s operations in order to successfully guide VU through its own fiscal planning, while also securing crucial state funding, Johnson said.
“I have seen a lot of change over the years for sure, but it has been good change for certain,” Eaton said.
But going from punching numbers into calculators to adapting to the advancement of today’s technology and learning new computer software has been a “welcome change,”
Eaton said.
His ability to adapt to change has helped him in his contributions to the overall financial health of VU.
“Higher (education) is somewhat cyclical in that we are a public university and a funded university,” said Eaton. “So if the state of Indiana is healthy financially, they’re more able to fund what we need and fund our requests.”
The financial health of the university has depended on whether the economy is “booming,” he said, but in the event of a recession, there is some uncertainty and the success of the university itself depends on strong budgeting strategies.
“We’ve always budgeted conservatively just to account for the give and take of that (state) funding, and it’s actually worked out for as long as I’ve been here,” Eaton said.
“We’ve been pretty stable, financially.”
While some years have been better than others, Eaton believes that the approach taken by the university thus far has been good, and he attributes that to faculty, staff and administrators collectively.
“It’s been a team effort for sure,” Eaton said.
He reflected on his time at VU and said the people are what he will miss the most.
“We like to laugh and enjoy work, but when it comes down to business, we always get the job done; it’s really been a great group of people,” he said.
Through many challenges, Eaton and his core group of colleagues have always seemed to adapt and forge ahead, making his career here at VU “one for the books.”
