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On Wednesday, UNC-Chapel Hill announced it had hired a senior associate chief information officer to oversee some of the school’s most important technology services. Mark Hoeting will make a $275,000 salary.
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A quick Google search of Hoeting’s name will let you know there’s baggage attached.
In 2019, Hoeting resigned from Georgia Tech after the state’s university system found he had violated ethical rules, according to reporting from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Hoeting was in a “briefly romantic” relationship with a sales representative of a tech services vendor. He directed Georgia Tech to do business with that vendor — to the tune of $5 million worth of equipment.
Hoeting also recommend the vendor to other offices in the university system and in government.
Those purchases, which totaled more than $5 million, were made in 2017. The relationship began in 2015.
The relationship included “hanging out and getting drinks after work” and became romantic in 2016, the year Hoeting was hired at Georgia Tech, longtime Journal-Constitution reporter Eric Stirgus wrote. The romantic phase of the relationship lasted about a month, Hoeting said.
Some employees suspected “that Mr. Hoeting had more than a professional relationship with the sales representative based upon what they observed as the sales representative’s access to Mr. Hoeting, the way negotiations were handled between Mr. Hoeting and the sales representative and the lack of a deep discount that GT was accustomed to receiving from vendors,” according to a report by the University System of Georgia as described by the Journal-Constitution.
Investigators with the university system were unable to determine whether the school overpaid for the equipment, Stirgus wrote.
UNC’s vice chancellor for information technology, J. Michael Barker, told The News & Observer in a statement that “after conducting extensive interviews, background and employment verification checks, and taking into account the reported ethics history, we are confident in our selection to fill the senior associate CIO for Core Services role.”
“Carolina has a steadfast commitment to maintaining integrity and the highest professional standards of behavior by our faculty, staff and students,” Barker’s statement reads. “Information Technology Services conducted a thorough national search that returned a strong pool of candidates.”
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The News & Observer attempted to contact Hoeting for comment Friday but did not receive a response in time for publication.
Hoeting said he disclosed the relationship to his supervisor, but that supervisor was himself fired “for being paid to serve on the board of a vendor that was getting paid to do work for Georgia Tech,” Stirgus wrote. No Georgia Tech employee recalled being notified of any such disclosure, according to the report.
Hoeting’s resignation letter to Georgia Tech, according to Stirgus, was two sentences long.
He starts at UNC on Oct. 5.
In UNC’s announcement about Hoeting’s hiring, Barker called Hoeting’s new role “a big job.”
The annoucement touts the “digital transformation portfolio valued at more than $450 million” that Hoeting led at Georgia Tech. There, Hoeting “advanced collaborative initiatives supporting the institution’s enterprise, academic and research missions,” according to UNC.
The announcement also cites Hoeting’s more recent experience as a senior executive at Info-Tech Research Group, where he advised tech leaders at research universities and national labs. He also held senior tech roles at Georgia State University and Arkansas State University.
“Mark’s experience and aptitude stood out from among the very highly qualified collection of candidates the nationwide search process drew,” Barker said in a statement.
“The recruitment process attracted the best of candidates — and I am thrilled to convey that with Mark we have the best of the best joining us.”
This story was originally published September 25, 2026 at 1:00 PM with the headline “In previous job, UNC’s new tech hire steered $5M to a vendor whose rep he dated.”
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