University Times

To assist the elderly and their families through the health care and finance maze, the Institute on Aging, a collaboration of Pitt and UPMC Health System, has established a toll-free call center. The 24-hour non-emergency number, 1-866/430-8742, will help callers access services, information and resources both within and outside of UPMC Health System. The institute […]

Seismic Micro-Technology, Inc., of Houston, Texas has donated 10 copies of The KINGDOM Suite+ Software package to Pitt’s Department of Geology and Planetary Science. The donation is valued at $704,000. This software, which has been installed in the department’s computer laboratory, is used to process, visualize and analyze subsurface 2-D and 3-D seismic reflection data. […]

Pitt is still “a couple of weeks away” from signing a new contract for employee health insurance, according to Vice Chancellor for Human Resources Ronald W. Frisch. “The negotiations [with health insurers] have been going slowly this year, the slowest I’ve ever seen,” Frisch said this week. “We keep pushing and pushing, but we’re not […]

Wilfried W. Daehnick, professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, died Jan. 24, 2003. He was 74. A distinguished experimental nuclear physicist, Daehnick’s earliest work used nuclear reactions to decipher the orbital motion of neutrons and protons, and the orbit-changing collisions between them, in atomic nuclei. The bulk of this effort was done […]

Should the highest percentage pay raises at Pitt next year go to the University’s lowest-paid employees (as they did in 1996)? Would employees be better off if Pitt paid a larger share of their health insurance costs, in lieu of salary increases? Questions such as those are expected to come up at meetings of the […]

Anne Sawyer Berkley, a charter member of the Kuntu Writers Workshop, died Dec. 7, 2002, at her home in National City, CA. Memorial contributions may be made to Friends of Allensworth, San Diego Chapter 12, P.O. Box 161211, San Diego CA 92176.

Pitt’s Staff Association Council (SAC) plans to meet behind closed doors Feb. 12 to discuss what it calls “staff salary inequities.” Last month SAC voiced outrage at what members called excessive raises and retention bonuses the trustees approved for Pitt senior officers. The group said it would draft a resolution expressing SAC’s views on compensation […]

In an op-ed piece published in the Jan. 24 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ralph J. Cappy defended the compensation packages that he and other Pitt trustees recently awarded to the University’s senior administrators. Cappy wrote that Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg himself had argued eloquently, year after year, against such substantial raises and […]

Contrary to claims by ACLU attorneys and others seeking to force Pitt through the courts to extend health benefits to employees’ same-sex partners, the University has never attacked the city’s anti-discrimination ordinance, Pitt General Counsel Alan A. Garfinkel reiterated in an interview yesterday. “Our position has always been that the city ordinance, as amended in […]