University Times

Pitt’s Board of Trustees last week increased two student fees, okayed the naming of a new residence hall, re-elected Ralph J. Cappy as board chair and elected three new trustees.

Trustees also approved amending the make-up of the board and certain other governance matters at its June 27 meeting.

Beginning this fall, Pittsburgh campus full-time students will pay $85 per term for the student health fee, which was raised from $65 per term. Greensburg campus students will see an increase in their student activities fee from $65 to $85 per term for full-time students and from $18 to $22 per term for part-timers.

The board approved naming Pitt-Bradford’s new residence hall in honor of Howard Fesenmyer, a retired Zippo Manufacturing Co. executive who is executive secretary of the Blaisdell Foundation and a member of the UPB advisory board. Fesenmyer House will be home to 144 students this fall. Pitt-Bradford broke ground for the $7.3 million, three-story residence hall last July. A ribbon-cutting and dedication ceremony for Fesenmyer House is planned for Sept. 5.

Fesenmyer, who attended the June 27 board meeting, has been chair of the institutional advancement council of Pitt-Bradford’s advisory board for more than a decade, helping to raise $10 million for the campus’s Campaign 2000 and serving as chair of the Complete the Campus Campaign, which raised $13.1 million for campus construction; the Reed-Coit Scholarship Challenge, which raised $2 million for scholarships, and the Blaisdell Fine Arts Challenge, which raised $3.4 million to build Blaisdell Hall. He currently is leading the fundraising campaign for a campus interfaith chapel.

In 1998, Pitt-Bradford awarded Fesenmyer its highest honor, the Presidential Medal of Distinction, given to those who make significant contributions to the campus and the community.

Trustees re-elected Cappy, former chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, to his sixth one-year term as chair. Also re-elected as board co-chairs were Suzanne W. Broadhurst, director of corporate giving at Eat’n Park Hospitality Group, and Robert M. Hernandez, retired vice chair and CFO of USX Corp. and chair of RTI International Metals.

Newly elected trustees are Brian Generalovich (Arts and Sciences ’66, Dental Medicine ’68), a dentist in private practice in Hermitage, Pa., and immediate past president (2006-08) of the Pitt Alumni Association; Dawne S. Hickton (Law ’83), vice chair and CEO of RTI International Metals, and college and pro football hall-of-famer Dan Marino (Arts and Sciences ’83), in-studio co-host of CBS-TV’s “The NFL Today” and president of the Dan Marino Foundation.

Hickton and Marino were elected as special trustees and Generalovich was elected as an alumni trustee. All three were elected to four-year terms.

Re-elected to the board were: Eva Tansky Blum, senior vice president, director of community affairs and chair of the PNC Foundation (term trustee); Broadhurst (special trustee); Catherine D. DeAngelis, editor in chief of the Journal of the American Medical Association (special trustee); Lee B. Foster II, board chair of the L.B. Foster Co. (special trustee); George L. Miles Jr., president and CEO of WQED Multimedia (term trustee); Marlee S. Myers, Pittsburgh-office managing partner of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP (term trustee); Robert A. Paul, chair and CEO of AMPCO-Pittsburgh Corp. (term trustee), and Robert P. Randall, president and CEO of TRACO (term trustee).

At the June 27 meeting, Cappy acknowledged the board service of Steven C. Beering, president emeritus of Purdue University, who holds bachelor’s and medical degrees from Pitt. A Pitt Bicentennial Medallion of Distinction awardee, Beering, who had served on Pitt’s board since 2000 and whose term had expired, was awarded the trustees medallion by Cappy.

In other board developments, trustees voted to establish a risk and compliance committee as a standing committee of the board. The primary function of the committee will be to assist the board in fulfilling its oversight responsibilities with respect to: the risks inherent in the business of the University and the control processes related to such risks; the risk profile of the University; the risk management, compliance and control activities of the University; the integrity of the University’s systems of operational controls regarding legal and regulatory compliance, and compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

The committee will have the authority to retain external professionals to render advice in such matters. A minimum of five trustees will be appointed by the board chair to sit on the committee.

The addition of the new committee brings to 15 the number of standing committees.

The board also voted to amend several governance provisions, including:

• Increasing the number of special trustees from 15 to 16.

• Tying the retirement provision for term, special and alumni trustees to the specific age of 75. Previously, the bylaws stipulated that no term, special or alumni trustee could be elected after having reached the age of 72, which, trustees said, has resulted in unequal treatment, precluding the continued service of some board members at the age of 72, while others have been permitted to serve beyond that age.

• Changing the eligible term of service for the board chair from a maximum of five consecutive terms to a maximum of eight consecutive terms. Term limits for vice chairs, formerly five consecutive one-year terms, were eliminated.

• Adding to the board’s executive committee the chairs of all the standing committees.

• Changing the criteria for emeritus trustees to authorize exceptions to the rule that such trustees must have served as board members for 10 years.

In capital campaign news, Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg announced that Pitt has passed the $1.25 billion mark toward its $2 billion goal. Launched in 1997, the campaign had its initial $500 million goal doubled by the Board of Trustees in 2002. It was doubled again in June 2006 to $2 billion after the $1 billion mark was reached eight months ahead of schedule.

Nordenberg also acknowledged the service of Leland D. Patouillet, associate vice chancellor for alumni relations and executive director of the Pitt Alumni Association, who is leaving Pitt to become associate vice president of alumni relations at the University of Florida and executive director of its alumni association effective Sept. 1. Patouillet has headed alumni relations at Pitt since 1991.

The next meeting of the full board will be Oct. 31.

—Peter Hart