University Times

Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg this week announced the appointment of a committee to launch a national search for a new athletics director. Former AD Steve Pederson resigned in December to assume a similar post at the University of Nebraska.

Following Pederson’s resignation, Marc Boehm was named interim director of athletics. Boehm had been associate athletics director since 1997.

Members of the committee are: Susan Albrecht, associate dean in the School of Nursing and the University’s faculty representative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA); Brian Beinecke, former linebacker on the Panthers football team who is now a graduate student in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences; Thomas Bigley, retired managing partner of Ernst & Young and immediate past chair of the Pitt Board of Trustees athletics committee; Kirk Bruce, Pitt’s assistant athletics director for Olympic sports and former women’s basketball coach; Jerome Cochran, Pitt’s executive vice chancellor; John Conomikes, chair of the executive committee of Hearst Argyle Television Inc. and chair of the Pitt Board of Trustees athletics committee; John Elliot, director of Internal Audit and chair of the University’s NCAA certification steering committee, and Donna Sanft, Pitt’s associate athletics director for student life and compliance.

Cochran will chair the committee. He was chair of the University’s last search committee for an athletics director in 1996. Albrecht, Bigley and Conomikes also served on that earlier committee.