After almost twenty years at Covenant, Troy Duble has decided to step down from his role as Vice President for Advancement. Duble, who graduated from Covenant in 1993 with a degree in business administration, acted as director of development prior to becoming vice president for advancement in 2005. Duble cites “a strong call to pursue new ventures” as a reason for his departure.
“It has been a very hard decision to leave my role as vice president,” he said in a message sent to faculty and staff on Thursday, “and I think that if I’m going to leave, now is just the right time, while the College is in a good place between campaigns and while I know that we have an incredible team of directors in advancement.”
As President Halvorson wrote to Covenant’s faculty and staff, “It’s always difficult to lose a long-serving and trusted member of a team… it would be difficult to capture in any brief statement the significance of the contributions that Troy has made—some of the widely known, others known only to a few—in his time at Covenant College.” In addition to demonstrating faithful devotion to Christ and a love for Covenant, according to Halvorson, Duble “provided critical stability and guidance to the college in his years of leadership.”
The College plans to use Troy Duble’s departure as an opportunity to reevaluate the school’s administrative structure. As Vice President for Advancement, Duble oversaw college development, church relations, alumni relations, career services, communications, facilities, grounds, and auxiliary services, and was a large participant in Covenant’s BUILD campaign. His role encompassed a vast array of responsibilities that will henceforth be divided into two separate positions. Says Halvorson, “In light of the significant breadth of college operations that Troy was being asked to oversee, we will be replacing his vice presidential post with two vice presidents—a vice president for development and a vice president for admissions.”
As Covenant seeks to fill the two new vice presidential roles within the next year, Jeff Sandhoff will fill the role of Interim Vice President for Development, and Matthew Bryant will act as the Interim Vice President for Admissions. Jeff Sandhoff, who has worked at Covenant since 2010, first as a major gifts officer and then as director of major gifts, will assume the responsibilities of church relations, alumni relations, and oversee planned giving while continuing major gift fundraising. Matthew Bryant, who has worked in both admissions and church relations since 2001, is Covenant’s current director of admissions and director of church relations and will continue in those roles while also taking responsibility for financial aid and marketing/communications.
Duble will continue to aid the college through the coming transitional period. President Halvorson reports that Duble will remain as a full-time college employee through the end of 2014 and will continue into 2015 as a part-time fundraiser. Duble remains dedicated to the Covenant community: as he said at the conclusion of his letter, “I love the mission and purpose of Covenant College and will continue to support Covenant in whatever ways I can.”