University Times

Faculty at Pitt's Johnstown campus won't be allowed to take sabbaticals next year. UPJ's administration imposed the no-sabbaticals policy to avoid a faculty shortfall, campus president Albert Etheridge told the University Times. UPJ will lose four of its 130 full-time teaching faculty during the current academic year and 11 more next year through the University's […]

Faculty, staff and administrators exchanged ideas about Pitt's policy for awarding salary raises, during the fall plenary session of the University Senate yesterday, Oct. 14. The University Planning and Budgeting Committee (UPBC), a group of employees, students and administrators that advises the senior administration, is beginning a year-long review of the policy. "The time has […]

UPMC Health System's Center for Sports Medicine is one of seven U.S. sports medicine centers cited by SELF magazine as being "on the cutting edge of research and treatment." SELF lists the leading centers in its October issue. The center is the Pittsburgh region's largest and most comprehensive sports medicine program. Christopher Harner, professor of […]

Today, Oct. 15, is the deadline for health insurers to submit bids for Pitt's employee medical insurance business for next year. The University's current insurers, UPMC Health Plan and Highmark Blue Cross/Blue Shield, had expressed interest in bidding. So had CIGNA Companies, a national insurer with a growing presence in western Pennsylvania. "We sent out […]

Pitt's Katz Graduate School of Business has opened an umbrella institute to manage activities of three of its centers. The Institute for Entrepreneurial Excellence was established to consolidate support for entrepreneurs from start-up to mature businesses. The Small Business Development Center (SBDC), established at Katz in 1979, and the Family Enterprise Center (FEC), established in […]

Even loyal Senate Council attendees admit the meetings can be a bit — dry? ponderous? — with their debates over bylaw revisions, cost attribution studies and other less-than-scintillating agenda items. But Thomas Detre, Pitt senior vice chancellor for Health Sciences (and thus, an administrative member of Council) since December 1984, could always be counted on […]

Timothy M. Wright has been named the inaugural recipient of the Margaret Jane Miller Endowed Professorship for Arthritis Research. Wright is chief of the division of rheumatology and clinical immunology and associate professor of medicine. The endowed professorship was established by Russell P. Miller in honor of his wife, who died in July 1997 of […]

Campus food service vendors have been told that Pitt's Faculty Assembly doesn't want them serving Nabisco products here. Whether vendors pay attention to the Assembly is up to them. Pitt's administration won't impose sanctions if they continue to sell Oreos, Ritz crackers or other Nabisco products on campus, Chancellor Mark Nordenberg said. Last month, Faculty […]

Alicia Suskin Ostriker was one of five authors nominated as a finalist for a 1998 National Book Award for Poetry by the National Book Foundation. Her volume of poems, "The Little Space: Poems Selected and New, 1968-1998," will be published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in November as part of the Pitt Poetry Series. […]

Diane E. Ford died on Oct. 10, 1998, after a long battle against ovarian cancer. She came to the University in 1985 as administrative secretary to the director of the University of Pittsburgh Bicentennial Commission. In 1987, after the successful completion of the Bicentennial celebration, she joined the Office of the Secretary. Ford was elected […]