Accolades

Margaret "Maggie" McDonald, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs and international programs at the University of Pittsburgh’s Schools of the Health Sciences, will be presented with the Group on Institutional Advancement (GIA) Distinguished Service Award at the upcoming 2018 Association of American Medical Colleges National Professional Development Conference for Institutional Advancement.

The award recognizes McDonald for her significant and longstanding contributions to the GIA, the AAMC and her profession. In McDonald's nomination letters, colleagues recognized her as an accomplished writer and editor, dedicated to the GIA and academic medicine, and generous in sharing best practices to help advance the field.

Suzan Obagi, an associate professor of both dermatology and plastic surgery at the University of Pittsburgh, was named the 2018 president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery at the the group’s 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting held in February in Las Vegas. Obagi is the director of the UPMC Cosmetic Surgery and Skin Health Center; she is also involved in training residents and physicians from around the world on the latest in cosmetic and laser surgery.

Obagi focuses on skin health restoration, autologous fat augmentation (fat transfer), neuromodulators and soft tissue fillers, chemical peeling, dermabrasion and lasers. Her research interests include ways to improve adipocyte (fat) survival after transplantation, patient safety in skin resurfacing, laser treatment for improving Raynaud’s phenomenon and ultrasound measurement of long-term fat graft survival after transplantation.

Raymond M. Davis, a major gifts officer who focuses on the Florida region, has been named to Who’s Next: Philanthropy by local new organization The Incline.

Davis is a graduate of Walsh University and began his work in donor relations there. He joined Pitt’s Institutional Advancement staff in 2015 and is pursuing a master of studies in law degree at Pitt Law.

Who’s Next: Philanthropy recognized 17 individuals under age 40 who are making a difference in philanthropy in Pittsburgh.

Also named to the list were Pitt alumni Zack Block (LAW ’05), executive director of Repair the World: Pittsburgh; Sloane Davidson (GSPIA ’17), founder and CEO of Hello Neighbor; Pam Eichenbaum (A&S ’08), business development associate at Innovation Works; and Ryan Gayman (A&S ’12), accelerator manager at Social Venture Partners Pittsburgh and partner at CitizenCity.

Cynthia Sweet has joined the University’s Office of Economic Partnerships as associate vice chancellor for economic partnerships. In this newly created role, she will work closely with Rebecca Bagley, vice chancellor for economic partnerships, to advance University initiatives that aim to foster economic growth on campus and across the region. Among Sweet’s first priorities will be to guide and focus the corporate engagement office rollout strategy.

Sweet most recently was associate vice president of corporate and government relations at West Virginia University and was the founding director of WVU’s Corporate Relations Office. She previously served as senior university business liaison in the Office of Corporate Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Sweet holds a bachelor’s degree in geography with a concentration in economic development and international relations from St. Cloud State University and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning with a specialization in international economic development from UW-Madison.

Cynthia Sweet has joined the University’s Office of Economic Partnerships as associate vice chancellor for economic partnerships. In this newly created role, she will work closely with Rebecca Bagley, vice chancellor for economic partnerships, to advance University initiatives that aim to foster economic growth on campus and across the region. Among Sweet’s first priorities will be to guide and focus the corporate engagement office rollout strategy.

Sweet most recently was associate vice president of corporate and government relations at West Virginia University and was the founding director of WVU’s Corporate Relations Office. She previously served as senior university business liaison in the Office of Corporate Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Sweet holds a bachelor’s degree in geography with a concentration in economic development and international relations from St. Cloud State University and a master’s degree in urban and regional planning with a specialization in international economic development from UW-Madison.

Dietrich Stephan has been named Life Sciences Pennsylvania’s 2017 Thought Leader of the Year.

The award honors an individual “who has a clearly articulated and enacted vision for advancing the scientific and business prowess of Pennsylvania; has harnessed diverse resources to implement that vision; has advanced Pennsylvania as a hub of the life sciences and has established broad, diverse support for his/her efforts to improve the lives of patients.”

Stephan, a renowned human geneticist and entrepreneur, is a professor of human genetics at Pitt Public Health and chief executive officer of LifeX. The LifeX initiative aims to translate life sciences discovery and invention to the marketplace, focusing initially on fighting cancer, Alzheimer's, multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, obesity and diabetes, and rare genetic diseases.

The award will be presented March 14 at the statewide life sciences trade organization’s annual dinner in Philadelphia.

Pitt’s chief financial officer, Senior Vice Chancellor Arthur G. Ramicone, has announced he will retire at the end of August, ending a 30-year career at Pitt. 

Ramicone began working at Pitt in 1988 as a manager of internal audit. He worked his way through the ranks and today oversees 14 departments, ranging from payroll to risk management. 

He is credited with implementing a number of new systems and upgrades over the years, including a data warehouse and a new travel management program, which itself has generated significant cost savings for Pitt.

“In the last 30 years, Art has made lasting contributions to the strength of this University,” said Pitt Chancellor Patrick Gallagher. “He is a leader known for his honesty, integrity and sense of humor — and for bringing great teams together to tackle the right challenges. As a result, the University finds itself in an enviable position of exceptional financial strength.”

The University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business is in good company. Katz’s MBA program is one of the best for return on investments nationally, according to a ranking from Social Finance (SoFi), a student loan refinancing company.

SoFi said Pitt’s Katz school, Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business were the only three schools whose graduates have excellent salaries and relatively low loan obligations. This is the first time the Katz school has been included in the SoFi ranking, which is developed independently of school-reported figures and instead uses data from 60,000 student loan refinancing applications the company received between January 2014 and December 2017.

Katz’s MBA graduates received the sixth best return on investment and the program ranked 17th in highest salary. It’s the second best return on investment and fourth highest salary among public programs ranked by SoFi.

The North Central Sociological Association recognized a Pitt faculty member’s paper on the perpetuation of racism in the United States with the association’s Scholarly Achievement Award. Waverly Duck and Bentley University faculty member Anne Warfield Rawls cowrote “‘Fractured Reflections’ of High-Status Black Male Presentations of Self: Nonrecognition of Identity as a ‘Tacit’ Form of Institutional Racism.” Duck is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology within the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences. Published in the journal Sociological Focus, the article says that black men encounter racism even at higher levels of status.