A former assistant professor at Cleveland State University, already burdened with the ignominy of dismissal, now faces a more rigorous challenge—a financial reckoning for personal use of a university payment card. According to the Ohio Auditor of State, a recent audit release, Junior Gonzales, the implicated party from the institution's Chemistry Department, has been pinned with a finding for recovery for an amount surpassing $85,000.
Charged with misuse of funds not his own, the ex-educator's fall from grace is documented in a meticulous review of the university's accounts from the 2023 to 2024 fiscal year. Having landed the role in February 2023, Gonzales' tenure at Cleveland State was cut short. He was fired in early January 2024 when the university, sniffing something amiss, canceled his payment privileges. Between March 2023 and early January 2024, it was later confirmed that Gonzales made a spree of personal purchases with the card.
The depth of Gonzales' infractions became apparent in this comprehensive financial scrutiny by internal auditors. Notably, the auditors uncovered a misallocation of monies. As Gonzales admitted, the purchases of $85,258.27 had nothing to do with university business. These findings are laid bare for public view on the Ohio Auditor's official website, where the full report has been published. Reparations have been underway. Cleveland State has already refunded the National Institutes of Health—a move made via a trimmed-down federal fund request—to $79,771.53. The aim, it seems, is, at the least, to cleanse the blemish left by the misuse of this particular stream of federal grant money.
With the university's finances now laid bare and the recovery for the full amount squarely aimed at Gonzales, the Chemistry Department hopes to close this unsavory chapter and focus on its true mission—education and research, untainted by fiscal scandal. The former professor's misconduct serves as a stark warning and a call for tighter controls over such grant-linked financial resources, ensuring that trust once bestowed by federal agencies and the public remains intact.
