University Times

In a surprise move, Staff Association Council (SAC) at its meeting yesterday, June 11, re-elected Brian Hart to a third term as its president. Hart was selected over Rich Colwell, SAC's vice president for steering, in a secret ballot. It was the first such ballot for SAC in about five years, according to several members. […]

The ad hoc committee that has been working since January on a new early retirement plan for tenured faculty hopes to finalize its proposal at a meeting tomorrow, June 13. If that happens, committee members said, they will forward the plan to Chancellor Mark Nordenberg ASAP. Nordenberg told Senate Council on Monday that he will […]

Pitt's next senior vice chancellor for the Health Sciences will also be dean of the School of Medicine. Chancellor Mark Norden-berg announced his decision to combine the jobs in his June 6 Campus Update letter to the University community. "This organizational model is one that has been effectively employed at other institutions and should add […]

The union representing Pittsburgh campus police has reached a contract settlement with the University that calls for retroactive raises plus pay increases in each of the next three years. The 54 members of the University of Pittsburgh Police Association (UPPA) — including police officers, guards and dispatchers — have been working under contract extensions since […]

Jazz greats Dianne Reeves and Norman Connors, and nationally syndicated television talk show host Bev Smith will be among the featured attractions at a Pitt African American reunion weekend, June 27 – 29. The weekend is sponsored by Pitt's African American Alumni Council in association with Black Entertainment Television (BET) and the Coca Cola Celebrity […]

Pitt's highest paid administrators and professors during the 1995-96 fiscal year were — once again — from the Health Sciences, according to an Internal Revenue Service form that the University filed last month. The IRS requires tax-exempt, private corporations like Pitt to file a Form 990 annually. In some years, Pitt's form has revealed previously […]

Acting for the full Board of Trustees, the board's investment committee has approved the borrowing by the University of up to $5 million to help support technology transfer projects based on the research of Pitt faculty. According to the loan resolution, passed June 9, projects for which the money will be used are designed to […]

In 1817, British physician James Parkinson published a paper describing what he called "the shaking palsy" and what later became known as Parkinson's disease — a slow-developing but irreversible degeneration of nerve cells in the part of the brain that controls muscle movements. In the early 1960s, researchers finally identified the fundamental defect behind the […]

Parkinson's disease is a neurological disor- der that progressively robs people of control over their movements. In the majority of cases, it doesn't affect thinking or memory. Alzheimer's disease is likewise a progressive neurological disorder. But normally it takes away its victims' memories and thinking powers without impairing their motor skills. And yet… "It turns […]