Mr. Guinn started his part-time employment at Cumberland University on March 1st, 2022, as the Postmaster in the school’s post office. Prior to coming to CU, he was in the teaching profession for twenty-eight years before retiring from the Lebanon Special School District.
Cumberland University is a special place for Mike, and he enjoys working on this campus. Mike tries to support the students, and interacting with them daily makes his day even better.
Mr. Chitwood was born in Indianapolis, Indiana and graduated from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI) with a bachelor’s degree in Tourism, Conventions and Event Management.
Logan has been working with Chartwells Higher Education since 2016. Logan and has over 15 years of experience in the food service industry.
He has been with Cumberland University since the fall of 2021 working as the General Manager.
Originally from Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, Libby O’Guin has served in the Student Life arena for the university since 1999. While attending Cumberland University as an undergraduate, Libby received academic and athletic scholarships and served as a member of the CU Softball team. Other organizations she joined included Pi Gamma Mu, Omicron Delta Kappa, Alpha Chi, Psychology Club, President’s Association of Students, and Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges. Athletic Honors included All Conference, All Region, and MVP for 1997. Libby also received the Miss Cumberland Award in 1997.
The area of Student Life continues to be her passion along with mentoring students. She is direct advisor to Student Government Association, Best Buddies, and the Student Programming Board. She has also served as a TN Achieves Student Mentor since 2018. Libby also spends much of her time helping at her local church with events for the community, teaching children’s classes, and helping with the middle and high school age youth. She enjoys partnering the CU students with local community service agencies and also serves as a member of the Wilson County Health Council. Libby enjoys volunteering with MJ Little League, the Down Syndrome Association of Middle TN, and Best Buddies while regularly donating to United Way and the Community Help Center. She has been married to Justin Thomas O’Guin since 2004 and has one daughter, Abby, born in 2005 and one son, Griffin, born in 2010.
Ron Pavan enters his 12th year as Director of Athletics at Cumberland University in 2019-20 after serving in the same capacity for 14 years at Ohio Valley University in Parkersburg, W.Va. Pavan begins his 34th year in college athletics with experience in coaching basketball, soccer and softball, as well as serving as intramural director. He also begins his fifth year as the Vice President for Enrollment Services with the University.
During his tenure, Pavan has earned numerous awards and honors. In 2008, Ohio Valley University created the Ron Pavan Athletic Award that is given to a meritorious student-athlete every year in Pavan’s honor. He was inducted into the Ohio Valley University Hall of Fame and and named the Wilson County Sports Person of the Year in 2016. Pavan has also won the 2018 Mid-South Conference Athletic Director of the Year Award.
In 11 years at Cumberland, Pavan has successfully added eight sports to the program. two Assistant Athletic Director positions, a Strength and Conditioning Coach, an Assistant Wrestling Coach and a Sports Information Director. He has overseen the building of a new weight room, a resurfacing of the tennis courts and added a new athletic training room. During the Summer of 2011, Cumberland added new bleachers and a press box at Lindsey Donnell Stadium-Kirk Field.
Pavan took on his biggest project to date during the Spring and Summer of 2012, coordinating the takeover and renovation of Nokes-Lasater Field, the old Lebanon High School football facility. The locker room facilities and coaches offices were both completely renovated with new paint, carpet, central heat and air, new lockers and meeting room space added. An old track locker room was turned into an athletic training department, new fencing was added to the south and east sides of the stadium, and the playing areas surrounding the field were resurfaced. The facility includes two 70-yard practice fields, restrooms on both the home and visitors sides of the stadium, a concession stand and dressing areas for visiting players and coaches.
During the spring of 2018 Pavan oversaw Cumberland’s first fundraiser for athletics, spearheading an effort to raise $500|000 for softball, baseball and the gymnasium, adding stadium seating and a new press box at softball, chairback seating in the gym and new chairback seats and scoreboard at baseball.
The Pittsburgh, Pa., native has implemented a student-athlete attendance policy and community service program and instituted the use of the NAIA’s Champions of Character (Integrity, Respect, Responsibility, Servant Leadership and Sportsmanship) brand throughout the department. Cumberland was named a Five-Star Institution on the Champions of Character Scorecard in six of the last seven academic years.
Pavan has raised the awareness of Cumberland University through the Community Service Program and made one of his main objectives the effort to reconnect with local businesses and corporate sponsorships.
He signed an exclusive apparel and equipment contract with adidas in his first three months on the job at Cumberland, a move which benefits the entire athletic department as well as the University community, and has reconnected with the Coca-Cola Company on new programs. Having partnerships with local sporting goods company SportsWorld and building the new weight room with the mayor of Lebanon, Phillip Craighead, have also improved the image of Cumberland Athletics.
The additions of full-time staff members have all added greatly to the improvement of the department, raising the image and quality of publicity locally and nationally and improving student-athlete attendance and graduation rates. Pavan completed the Vanderbilt University Peabody College of Education and Human Development Summer Fellow program and the Peabody Professional Institute for Higher Education Management course during Summer 2010.
Cumberland has enjoyed unprecedented success both on-and-off the field during Pavan’s tenure, winning 24 conference regular season and tournament championships, two team national titles and four individual national championships during his 11 years. CU has also earned 952 Conference Scholar-Athlete honors, 261 NAIA Scholar-Athlete accolades and 86 All-American awards.
Before arriving at Cumberland, Pavan spent the previous 14 years at Ohio Valley University. While at OVU, he successfully added seven varsity programs to the athletic department, oversaw creation of a booster club and moved OVU Athletics from NAIA to NCAA Division II. He also oversaw development of an indoor baseball/softball complex, new fitness center, and improvements to the gym, soccer and softball fields.
Pavan raised OVU’s profile in the local community not only by elevating the quality of sports within the program but also by bringing in major sports personalities to conduct fundraisers and corporate sponsorships, including Mike Krzyzewski and Jay Bilas among others.
He spent nine years at Northeastern Christian Junior College in Villanova, Pa., serving in a variety of capacities, including head coach for men’s soccer, women’s basketball and softball as well as working in the admissions office and as the intramural director. He was also an instructor in the Art and Physical Education Department at NCJC.
Pavan earned his bachelor’s in Art and Physical Education from Lubbock Christian University in Lubbock, Texas, and received a master’s in Athletic Administration from West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va.
He is married to the former Tammi McGhee of Lynchburg, Va., and the couple has three children – Madison, Jenna and Mason.
Scotty serves as the Director, Campus Safety and Security. He is responsible for the executive oversight and delivery of safety and security services and programs on campus.
With over thirty (30) years of highly decorated law enforcement, safety, and security experience, including but not limited to executive leadership positions as the Chief of Police, for the City of Carthage, the Director of Investigations for the State of Tennessee under Governor Sundquist and Governor Bredsen and subsequently promoted to Deputy Director/Special Agent under Governor Haslam, Mr. Lewis brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to bear on the CU campus.
During his career in law enforcement, as well as being P.O.S.T. certified, Mr. Lewis completed multiple law enforcement security and safety centric programs and is a 2002 graduate of the Government Management Institute at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.
As for working on the team at Cumberland University, Mr. Lewis simply states, “It is one of the most rewarding opportunities of my life. To help a student and protect the CU community, I know of nothing more important I could do with my life”.
Mr. Lewis and his family reside in his native Smith County, where he serves as Vice-Chair of the Smith County Board of Education.
Mr. Kurt Gorham joined Cumberland University in the summer of 2017 as a Senior Software Developer, with primary responsibilities focused on keeping CAMs stable, current, and functional to all university faculty, staff and student populations. This also includes the duties of maintaining the integrity of the associated Cams Enterprise as its primary database administrator. Other duties include integrations, automations of software projects for the Business Office, and other recent data acquisition activities flowing to/from CAMs besides day-to-day troubleshooting needs of IT concerns.
In the twenty years prior to joining Cumberland University, Mr. Gorham designed, built and implemented many software projects for Fortune 500 clients in the Southeast United States as a contract consultant. Some of his skills include web page design utilizing HTML, stylesheets, Javascript, jQuery and C# .Net coding for User experience/user interface (UX/UI) single page applications.
His accounting clients included Deloitte in Hermitage, Tennessee from 1998-2000, 2007 & 2008. A year working the Space Coast with Harris Corp in Melbourne Florida, assigned to formulate SQL database development as a Software Engineer III for the Government Communications Division in 2005. Others included Genworth Financial in Brentwood for data migrations, and Lender Processing Services in Jacksonville for the HAMP loan program.
Other clients in health care or service organizations including BCBS of Florida, American Healthways, Vanderbilt UMC patient tracking, and Emdeon (WebMD) utilizing database programming skills for dashboard reporting. There were numerous contracts with government entities: including TVA, State of Tennessee, and Metro Nashville Public Schools.
His projects mostly focused on financial reporting, real-time transactional processing, populating data warehouse repositories, or Procurement software development. There were projects in life insurance for CNA Life, Lamar Life & Bradford Life. Several clients for the hospitality sector, working with Smith Travel Research (STR) in 2015 for corporate performance reporting, and TravLynx in 2012 that hosts a centralized reservation system for 10,000+ hotel properties, hosted in the cloud environment. Both are located in Hendersonville Tennessee.