Isaac Astill was hired as the Director of Parking and Transportation in July of 2012.
Photo by Phillip Waller I The Daily Mississippian
The University of Mississippi’s Director of Parking and Transportation Isaac Astill announced yesterday that he will be resigning due to a new job offer as a director of facilities in Tooele County, Utah.
Hired in July of 2012, Astill was the first-ever director of parking and transportation at the university.
Astill will officially step down from his position on Nov. 15 to begin work in his home state of Utah on Nov. 18, according to a university press release.
Working for Ole Miss, Astill executed many changes to the parking system on campus, such as creating online vehicle registration and extending hours of public transportation traveling to campus.
Most recently, Astill played a major part in implementing campus’ first parking garage, scheduled to be ready for the fall 2014 school year. Located next to the Vaught-Hemingway football stadium, the parking garage will allot 829 new parking spaces.
“I’ve grown tremendously since I’ve been here,” Astill said in an interview with University Communications. “The administration has been incredibly supportive — I can’t say that enough. I’ll always be a fan of Ole Miss. It’s a great school, and Oxford is a great city.”
Larry Sparks, vice chancellor of finance and administration, emphasized that Astill’s resignation was not related to the perception of Ole Miss’ parking situation.
“He is a good employee and he is a good person,” Sparks said. “We hope that he would have stayed. He was absolutely, positively not forced out regardless of what rumor still might be out there.”
Sparks indicated, as Astill himself said, that a new job opportunity is the cause of the move.
“Isaac (Astill) had another job opportunity and he took that job; he made us aware of it,” Sparks said. “We hate to see him go, we tried our best to entice him to stay and were unsuccessful in that.”
According to Sparks, the department of administration and finance has already put together a search committee to immediately begin looking for individuals and accepting applications. Sparks said the department is talking to one or two individuals about the possibility of serving in interim capacity.
If no replacement is found, Sparks said members of the department will serve internally with an interim position.
