University Times

Nominations are currently being accepted for the new Chancellor's Award for Excellence. The award honors staff who have demonstrated dedication to the University beyond the responsibilities of their job. It is the equivalent of the Chancellor's Distinguished, Teaching, Research and Public Service Awards for faculty. "I believe that the Chancellor's Award for Excellence sends a […]

Richard P. Stiger, a 20-year veteran of the Pitt campus police force, died Oct. 31 of cancer. He was 60. A memorial service will be held Nov. 23, at 2 p.m. in the Church of the Ascension, 4729 N. Ellsworth Ave. In addition to serving as a Pitt police officer, Stiger in 1986 founded a […]

A fter 26 years as clerk of the University Senate, Eva Reid Brosius will resign Dec. 1 to take on a new assignment: writing the Senate's official history. Given her long affiliation with the Senate and her historical perspective of the University, Brosius was a natural choice for the job, said Robert E. Dunkelman, secretary […]

Staff Association Council (SAC) has been receiving a steady flow of e-mail and phone calls from University staff members anxious to learn if an early retirement plan will soon be offered to staff members. In response to those questions, SAC President Brian Hart noted at the group's Nov. 13 meeting that nothing has been done […]

The lawyers have had their say. Now Pitt senior administrators are weighing the merits of four different models of a new early retirement incentive plan for Pitt full-time, tenured faculty. "We're at a point where outside legal counsel has completed its review of the legality of the various options. Now it's a matter of [the […]

Roughly 47 million people in the United States smoke cigarettes. At any one time, more than 70 percent of those smokers report that they would like to quit smoking and about 17 million Americans annually attempt to quit. "I think a lot of those efforts are probably fairly weak," says Saul Shiffman, director of the […]

Faced with budget constraints, escalating journal subscription costs, rapidly changing technologies and new demands from its customers, University Library System (ULS) personnel have drafted a strategic plan to guide future decisions on improving Pitt library services and collections. Now ULS wants to know what its customers — Pitt faculty, staff and students — think of […]

A University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) cardiologist has found that routine cardiovascular testing to prevent exercise-related sudden death in athletes has limited usefulness because of the rarity of such events, the cost of screening and the poor accuracy of exercise testing for such events. Despite problems with routine testing, however, Paul Thompson, UPMC director […]

Pitt's Department of Computer Science celebrated its 30th anniversary on Nov. 15 with an alumni luncheon, computer and software demonstrations, historical displays and a reception. Heading the list of speakers was department chair Siegfried Treu, who provided an overview of the department's history. Faculty members representing the department's major research areas also presented programs. They […]

Help Wanted: University mathematician needed to develop a computer model of a foot engaged in fire-walking based on the laws of thermodynamics. The purpose of the project is to predict the temperature that the flesh of the foot reaches as a function of time. No salary. No tenure. No fringe benefits, except an opportunity to […]