University Times

Every year it’s lost parents, laundry carts & more lines.

So as the academic year begins…

What’s NEW at PITT? – PART 2

The hustle and bustle that marks the beginning of each academic year is here again. But schools at Pitt have not slept through the summer months, which saw everything from major renovations to the establishment of new academic programs to the hiring and promotion of employees.

The University Times asked deans and other school officials to provide a brief look at “what’s new” in their schools. This ssecond part of our series includes information on Pitt’s Provost area schools and the four regional campuses.

For news about the Schools of the Health Sciences and certain non-academic areas, see part 1, published in the Aug. 31 University Times.

A caution to the reader: None of the summaries here is meant to be all-encompassing, but rather they are overviews highlighting recent school news.

Arts and Sciences

During the past several months, Arts and Sciences (A&S) has launched a Bachelor of Science degree in actuarial mathematics, a minor in mathematics and a leadership certificate.

A new A&S certificate is being offered this fall for students interested in developing strategic planning, people management and communication skills. The School of Arts and Sciences leadership certificate program combines classroom instruction and community service to help students build essential skills and gain valuable real-world experience while earning credits toward the completion of their general education requirements.

As usual, Pitt has hired a number of faculty in its many A&S departments. Following is a small sampling of new hires.

• Former English faculty member Jonathan Arac has returned to his former position as Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English. Most recently Arac was the Harriman Professor and chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

Arac’s scholarly expertise is in English and American studies. His writings have been translated into Chinese, German, Italian and Japanese.

• Juan Duchesne-Winter is professor of Hispanic languages and literatures. He is a scholar who addresses contemporary Hispanophone American literatures from the perspective of comparative literature, postmodern literary theory and cultural studies. He most recently was chair of the University of Puerto Rico’s Spanish department.

Duchesne-Winter is a founding member and co-director of three independent journals of theory, cultural criticism and literature: Postdata (1989-1994), Nómada (1995-2000) and the newly established Hotel Abismo.

• David Earl, most recently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford, joined the chemistry department as an assistant professor. His research expertise is in computational and theoretical studies of complex materials.

Specifically, Earl’s research interests include intelligent design of catalytic materials, protein evolution and implications for drug resistance, immune system dynamics, vaccine design and protocol, computer simulation methodology and coarse-graining techniques.

• Pinar Emiralioglu, a new faculty member in the history department, is an Ottoman history and culture scholar. She will teach the Jewish studies course, Jews in the Islamic World.

• Kristen Fudeman, who has studied medieval French-Jewish writings, has joined the Department of French and Italian Languages and Literatures.

• Randall Halle joins the faculty of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures as the Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German and Film Studies. Halle had been on the faculty of the University of Rochester since 1996.

Halle’s projects include a book-length study that focuses on the work of film in the age of digital reproduction and a second that explores problematic moments in the development of European social philosophy through the debates around the European constitution, the question of human rights and the status of new migrants.

• Patrick Manning has been named Pitt’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor of World History. He most recently was a professor of history at Northeastern University.

A historian of African and world history, Manning is a former Guggenheim Fellow and has held visiting appointments at Stanford University, Johns Hopkins University and Macquarie University in Australia.

In addition to his books, monographs, chapters and journal articles, he has directed comprehensive web sites on world history, with funding support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

• Beth Roman is a new assistant professor of biological sciences. Her expertise is in toxicology and developmental biology. Her research uses zebra fish as a model experimental system to dissect the molecular pathways that guide blood vessel formation.

She received her PhD in environmental toxicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and did postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health.

New faculty members in the Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures are Luo Zhou, who received a master’s degree at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, and who will head the new basic Chinese language track, and Noriko Kanisawa Kowalchuck, who will teach in the Japanese language program. Kowalchuck received a master’s degree from Pitt’s School of Education.

The department has moved from the Cathedral of Learning to 702 Old Engineering Hall.

Education

Joining the education school as assistant professor in the Department of Administrative and Policy Studies is Erik Ness, who has had experience in policy planning as the associate director of the policy, planning and research division of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. In this position, he conducted policy analysis of the issues of statewide finance and academic affairs.

As a doctoral student at Vanderbilt, Ness won the Association for the Study of Higher Education Lumina Foundation for Education Dissertation Fellowship and the Vanderbilt Peabody Fellowship in National Education Policy.

Ness’s research interests include higher education policy and finance, the politics of higher education and the process of public policy.

The school has created the Pittsburgh Learning Policy Center, a collaborative effort between the school and the Learning Research and Development Center (LRDC).

The new organization is a University-wide center with the mission of exploring the possibilities for productive synergy between research on educational policy and research on learning.

Mary Kay Stein, professor at the School of Education and senior scientist at LRDC, is the center’s founding director.

In addition, a new School of Education doctoral program in learning policy is in the process of being developed with the goal of producing the next generation of scholars committed to examining the relationship between policy and practice with a special emphasis on the role of learning — from both an individual cognitive perspective and a social/organizational perspective.

Engineering

The School of Engineering this fall is combining its materials science and mechanical engineering departments to form the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science Engineering.

The move was prompted by an overlap in research interests, said engineering Dean Gerald D. Holder. The merger is not a reduction of the two programs, he maintained, noting the combined department will be the school’s largest in terms of number of faculty.

“Both programs are going to be stronger,” he said.

Minking K. Chyu, currently chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, will head the new department. John A. Barnard, chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, will become director of the materials science area within the combined department.

A grand opening of the new Petersen Institute of NanoScience and Engineering’s nanoscale fabrication and characterization facility is set for Sept. 29. The 4,000-sq.-ft. center is on the Thackeray Avenue level of Benedum Hall.

Headed by Hong Koo Kim, the nanoscience institute includes researchers from engineering, the health sciences and A&S.

New nanoscience faculty in engineering include:

• Ravi Shankar, assistant professor in industrial engineering. Shankar is exploring methods for the large-scale manufacture of nanomaterials by severe plastic deformation techniques. His research interests also involve the development of carbon-nanotube reinforced polymer materials, especially for biomedical applications such as dental restorations.

• Mechanical engineering and materials science engineering assistant professors Jennifer Gray and Daniel G. Cole.

Gray, formerly of the University of Virginia, has a primary research focus on the formation and directed growth of self-assembled nanostructures. Her research also incorporates various materials and surface analysis techniques, including electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy.

Cole’s research interests are in the area of nanosystems, measurement and control and in nanolithography. His research is centered around two instruments for measuring and manipulating things at the nanoscale: the atomic force microscope and the optical trap. Before coming to Pitt, Cole was a research assistant professor in mechanical engineering at Duke University.

Other new engineering faculty include:

• Lance Davidson, Department of Bioengineering, who works on the interfaces of engineering, physics and biology. Joining the Pitt bioengineering faculty as an assistant professor in the new Biomedical Science Tower 3 will allow him to work more closely with engineers and biologists to integrate molecular genetic details of morphogenesis with cellular and tissue mechanics, with the aim of helping design better artificial tissues and identifying the mechanical sources of birth defects.

• Xu Liang, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. She hopes to discover fundamental laws that govern water and energy cycles, and to investigate how the water and energy cycles affect the health of environment and ecological systems — and how they influence the transport and cycling of nutrients and pollutants at different scales, such as at local, regional, continental and global scales.

• Lisa Maillart, assistant professor of industrial engineering, who primarily studies decision-making under uncertainty. She applies Markov decision processes or stochastic processes to problems in maintenance optimization, medical decision making, sports and entrepreneurship. Her research projects address problems in areas ranging from dynamic breast cancer screening policies to optimal pit stop policies.

• Henry Zeringue, assistant professor of bioengineering. Zeringue earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin; his biomedical engineering work there developing microfluidic devices for assisted reproductive procedures now is being commercialized. His postdoctoral research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology explored the function of postsynaptic proteins of the rodent visual system utilizing RNA interference technology.

Zeringue’s neural microengineering laboratory is developing hybrid microfluidic/microelectronic devices for the precise “training” of in vitro neuronal cultures.

The engineering school is planning for renovation and expansion of Benedum Hall. An architect is in place and design options are being studied, Dean Holder said, adding that design plans are expected to be complete this year.

Pitt’s Board of Trustees earmarked $22.2 million for the project, which includes a new 27,000-sq.-ft. mezzanine level and the creation of state-of-the-art classrooms and labs.

Information Sciences

The School of Information Sciences (SIS) has reorganized to better represent the modern information professions. The distinctions among library, information science and telecommunications — the school’s three disciplines — have blurred in the 21st century. Librarians, for example, now need to master information technology, while systems designers need to understand how to organize information for efficient access and retrieval.

As of July, SIS has undergone a change in governance style — how the school and the various degree programs will be administered — in order to reflect these changes.

Instead of discipline-centric departments, the school now is organized around the degree programs and the research interests of the faculty.

A newly formed SIS Council is the principal forum for shared governance. It will assume oversight of traditional academic responsibilities such as the maintenance of academic standards in instruction, the development of educational programs and degree requirements, and the recommendation of policies in such areas as resource allocation, faculty and staff development, student affairs, research and service programs and the school’s relations with local, regional, national and international communities. The council’s membership includes faculty members, staff and students from across the degree programs.

New program chairs are Richard Cox — library and information science graduate program; Paul Munro — information science graduate program; Robert Perkoski — undergraduate information science program, and Richard Thompson — telecommunications graduate program.

Other changes at the school include a redesigning of the curriculum for the undergraduate program in information science. The curriculum is JAVA-based, web-centric and incorporates practical experience to better train students. Students will take a series of core courses that examine the basic principles of programming, database systems, networks, systems analysis and human factors. The redesigned curriculum includes three concentrations: information systems, user-centered design, and networks and security.

SIS also is offering a new specialization in digital libraries. This specialization offers the skills and knowledge of technology, information organization principles and end-user needs essential for a career in the digital libraries field.

Katz Graduate School of Business

Still unpacking from his arrival in mid-August is new Katz Dean John Delaney, who comes to Pitt from Michigan State University. Transition meetings with faculty and staff are priorities for his early days on campus, Delaney said.

(For more on Delaney, see April 27 University Times.)

Other changes at the school include the retirement of Jacob G. Birnberg, Robert W. Murphy Jr. Professor of Management Control Systems. Birnberg came to Pitt in 1964; he will remain as professor emeritus at Katz.

Law

The school’s newest full-time faculty member is Peter Oh. Oh’s scholarship focuses on the intersection between law and business and uses both interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary methods. He will teach Business Organizations, Agency & Partnership, Corporate Finance, and Law & Economics.

Oh’s work has been published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Corporation Law, Rutgers Law Review and Tulane Law Review, and has been cited by various courts.

Oh comes to Pitt from the William Mitchell College of Law, where he was an assistant professor. He previously taught at Florida State University College of Law as a visiting assistant professor. He received his BA from Yale and his JD from the University of Chicago.

Last month, law professor and research dean Michael Madison launched a web site (http://www.law.pitt.edu/faculty/research.php) that is designed to highlight faculty activities and accomplishments. The public is invited to subscribe to get updates on publications, presentations, awards and media citations.

The site includes a link to Madison’s blog, which features discussions of technology law and public policy.

Public and International Affairs

GSPIA is beginning the academic year with interim dean David Miller at the helm. Miller, who has spent eight years as associate dean at the school, was appointed to a one-year interim term that began July 1.

New programs at GSPIA include a major in human security in which students will study peacekeeping, state-failure and nation building, human rights, governance and the rule of law, economic security, humanitarian action, protection of refugees and peace-building in war-torn societies.

The major is available to students in GSPIA’s Master of International Development and Master of Public and International Affairs degree programs and is the first major in the school to span two degrees.

GSPIA is launching a new minor in civil security and disaster management to prepare students for work in security-related organizations. The program will include coursework on civil security, intelligence, information management, national security and disaster management.

Social Work

Sara Goodkind, a postdoctoral associate in the Center on Race and Social Problems, was named assistant professor in the School of Social Work. Her areas of interest include female youth in the juvenile justice system and the intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, class and sexuality.

Cynthia Bradley Pugh is a new field assistant professor in the child welfare education for baccalaureates (CWEB) program, which is the undergraduate component of the child welfare education and research programs in the school. Pugh will serve as the academic and curriculum coordinator for CWEB.

She was the director of the Homewood/Brushton YWCA where she managed a large child development center and after-school program.

Pugh received her MSW from the University of Pittsburgh in 1998 and is working toward completion of her PhD from Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Elizabeth Winter is a new field assistant professor/academic and curriculum coordinator for the child welfare education for leadership (CWEL) Program.

Winter began her career as an attorney in London. She holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees of art in jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and was a practicing attorney and senior legal counsel. She completed her MSW and PhD at Pitt in 1998 and 2000 respectively.

Winter has worked as a psychotherapist in private practice and as the director of program development at Family Links. She also has worked with the PA Council for Children, Youth and Families, the Allegheny County Juvenile Court Improvement Project and the PA Department of Public Welfare Medical Assistance Realignment Project.

The BASW program has received approval from the Office of the Provost to begin offering a minor in social work beginning this fall.

The school also is offering a new joint program with the Graduate School of Public Health.

Under the leadership of Helen Petracchi, associate professor and BASW program director, the social work school has been working with Kathy Humphrey, vice provost and dean of students, on two projects involving BASW students: a civic engagement/service learning project and a Center on Race and Social Problems research project in the Pitt residence halls.

University Center for International Studies

A search is underway to find a successor to UCIS Director William I. Brustein, who will leave Pitt in January to become associate provost for international affairs, director of international programs and studies, and professor of sociology, political science and history at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign.

(See Aug. 31 University Times.)

George E. Klinzing is heading the committee searching for Brustein’s successor\.

International Week is set for Sept. 24-30. Keynote speaker M. Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, will discuss how to prepare students to live and work in the new global marketplace.

UCIS’s study abroad program office on the 8th floor of the William Pitt Union has a bit more room to stretch out. It has expanded into space recently vacated by the Semester at Sea staff.

REGIONALS

Bradford

Pitt-Bradford has revised the curriculum of its Associate of Science in Information Systems degree to keep pace with the increasing demands of industry for computer support specialists.

The new curriculum is designed for people who oversee corporate information resources and will emphasize the importance of network security, backing up data and helping companies get the most out of their networks.

A new lab for the program includes 12 work stations and three network-related stations for students to disassemble and reassemble.

Pitt-Bradford has added a highly requested major to its curriculum, a Bachelor of Science in health and physical education.

The major is designed to prepare students for a kindergarten through grade 12 Pennsylvania teaching certification in the area of health and physical education.

Lori Mazza, director of athletics and recreational sports, who helped design the curriculum, said that few NCAA Division III schools in this region offer a major in health and physical education.

Pitt-Bradford and Jamestown (N.Y.) Community College have signed a transfer articulation agreement that will enable qualified JCC students to be admitted to Pitt-Bradford’s sport and recreation management program.

UPB also will offer a major in hospitality management that will prepare students to work in a large hotel or resort, cruise ship, convention bureau or center, or in the areas of event and banquet management.

The major will be part of the business management program.

Pitt-Bradford has begun offering its RN to BSN program for nurses in nearby St. Marys this fall. The program is designed for registered nurses who want to earn their Bachelor of Science in nursing.

Students considering a career in engineering will have enhanced options with a new two-year associate degree in engineering science at Pitt-Bradford.

UPB is working to create articulation agreements with area engineering schools to guarantee admission of Pitt-Bradford students who have earned the associate in engineering science degree.

Students considering a teaching career also have a new option at Pitt-Bradford. UPB now offers eight stand-alone education majors in the areas of biology, business, chemistry, English, environmental education, mathematics, social studies and elementary education. The new majors replace a system that required students to complete two majors — one in education and one in another area.

These new stand-alone majors bring the total number of majors on campus to 36.

Pitt-Bradford also has launched a major in accounting this fall.

Most of the courses that students will need to take for the new major have been offered previously as part of the accounting minor.

Ongoing renovations include the Seneca Building in downtown Bradford. Once renovations are complete, the Office of Outreach Services, the Center for Rural Health Practice and a component of the entrepreneurship program will be based in the building.

Pitt-Bradford is preparing a crime scene investigation house and a crime lab, two facilities that will be ready for use at the start of the spring term.

Students will use this CSI house as a working classroom, processing simulated crime scenes and collecting evidence while professors keep a close eye on their efforts using closed-circuit television. In addition, a crime lab is being developed in Fisher Hall where students will analyze the evidence they have collected from the CSI house.

Greensburg

The Greensburg campus has named a new interim vice president for Academic Affairs, J. Wesley Jamison, who is an associate professor of information science.

UPG also announced that Dean Nelson, assistant professor of natural sciences and mathematics, will serve as the new assistant vice president for academic affairs.

New faculty at UPG are: Paul Adams, political science, previously at the University of Richmond, who earned his PhD at the University of Massachusetts; Todd Brown, physics, previously at West Virginia University, who earned his PhD at Vanderbilt University; Amber McAlister, art history, previously at the University of Miami, who earned her PhD at the University of Georgia; Kristina Pazehoski, biochemistry, previously at Duquesne University, who earned her PhD from Duquesne, and James Ridilla, management and accounting, previously adjunct instructor at Seton Hill University, who is completing his MBA at Seton Hill.

UPG also had a number of staff hires and changes. They are: Michael Altman, UPG maintenance department, who worked for Donahue’s Inc. as a service technician and at Westmoreland Hospital as a maintenance technician; Adam Bowser, Admissions and Financial Aid, a UPG grad, who is former counselor of at-risk students in the Southmoreland School District; Sheila Confer, Academic Villages coordinator in charge of programming events and organizing leadership service programs, who was an academic adviser at UPG; Jana Giallonardo, director of campus activities and Academic Villages adviser, who has worked at Pitt and at Clarion University, and Rachel Heeter, Admissions and Financial Aid, a UPG grad, who worked at Westmoreland County Prison.

Other new staff include: Jessica Miller, UPG computing services department, a graduate of Mount Aloysius College, who has experience as a help-desk technician, a web site designer and in the maintenance of campus hardware and software; Valerie Kubenko, faculty secretary, who worked as an administrative assistant and in sales for IRIS Technologies; Sabrina Reed, academic adviser, who was a facilitator for career development services and cooperative education at Peirce College in Philadelphia; UPG grad Brian Root, live-in resident director at Robertshaw Hall, who earned a master’s degree from IUP and was a part-time staff writer for The Record-Argus newspaper; Kendra Sims, director of Housing and Residence Life, who was assistant director of residence life and judicial affairs at Robert Morris University and judicial affairs program coordinator at Duke University; Julie Turka, Admissions and Financial Aid, who formerly was with Pitt’s School of Nursing, and Jim Vikartosky, Millstein Library, who previously worked at the Greensburg Hempfield Area Library.

Johnstown

Pitt-Johnstown and the UPJ Student Senate last week dedicated a statue of the campus’s mascot, a mountain cat. The statue — 1,500 lbs. of bronze — is located near Heritage Square on the campus mall. UPJ President Albert L. Etheridge and student leaders spoke at the Sept. 8 ceremony.

UPJ also started its new membership in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, now in its 83rd season.

New faculty at UPJ include: Julie W. Ankrum, assistant professor of elementary education; Alvaro Bernal, assistant professor of Spanish; Matthew Burstein, assistant professor of philosophy; Dolores Buttry, assistant professor of German; Kathleen M. Ceroni, visiting assistant professor of secondary education; Michael W. Cox, assistant professor of English writing; Seunghyun Im, assistant professor of computer science; Patty W. Michael, assistant professor of communication; Mihaela V. Nocasian, assistant professor of communication; Barbara Petrosky, assistant professor of French; Kim T. Simons, assistant professor of chemistry, and Frances M. Zauhar, chair, Division of Humanities, and associate professor of English.

New staff at Pitt-Johnstown include: Kelly Austin, director of the Student Union and Student Affairs; Trish Beatty, grant specialist, Faculty Resource Center; Amanda Campbell, student accounts coordinator, Business Office; Francine Cooper, secretary, Office of the President; Julie Dewey, secretary, Owen Library; Mark Dougherty, associate director, Housing and Residence Life; Paul Hromulak, police officer; Wanda Lydick, registration specialist, Office of the Registrar; Robert Timulak, machinist, engineering; Jonathan Wescott, director of Housing and Residence Life, and Austin Young, night circulation supervisor, Owen Library.

Titusville

This fall Pitt-Titusville is offering students the opportunity to earn a four-year degree. The Bachelor of Arts in human relations program is made possible through the cooperative efforts of UPT and Pitt-Bradford.

The new human relations degree will be delivered entirely on the Titusville campus, with UPB faculty delivering the bulk of the classes through web-based courses and interactive television. Three classes will be offered this fall.

The human relations major integrates the fields of anthropology, psychology and sociology and prepares students for careers in counseling, gerontology or social work and for graduate studies in the fields of anthropology, business, industrial relations, psychology, social work and sociology.

New faculty at UPT include Charles C. Choo, assistant professor of physics, mathematics and computer science; Judith Gaydos, library director; Kerri Lee Last, instructor of nursing, and Susan Patton, visiting instructor of business.

New staff at UPT include: Brian B. Bibey, director of athletics; Lisa Mabray, coordinator of Mail Services; James V. Pennington, director of Residence Life, and Kim Roser, director of Health Services.

—Kimberly K. Barlow & Peter Hart