University Times

Betsy Porter, director of the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid (OAFA) since 1986, will retire next June 30.

Betsy Porter

Porter is credited widely with elevating the University’s status through her shaping of Pitt’s undergraduate student population. During her tenure, Pitt has seen a three-fold increase in the number of applicants to the Pittsburgh campus, a 170-point uptick in incoming freshmen’s average SAT scores and the near tripling of freshmen enrolled who were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes, as well as the enhanced diversity of the student body.

Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg said: “For two-and-a-half decades, Dr. Porter has consistently recruited outstanding Pitt freshman classes, and we always will be grateful for her substantial contribution to the University’s unparalleled progress in recent years.”

Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor Patricia E. Beeson, who announced Porter’s pending retirement last week, said, “It is difficult to think of a single individual who has done more than Betsy to shape the profile of the undergraduate student population on the Pittsburgh campus, thereby elevating the University’s reputation across the state and the nation.”

Porter joined Pitt in 1978 as senior associate director of OAFA; prior to that, she served as associate director of admissions at Duquesne University, from 1970 to 1978.

Porter’s accomplishments at Pitt include integrating admissions and financial aid into a single operation and implementing a recruiting plan that has resulted in increasingly diverse and well-prepared freshman classes.

Porter’s service was recognized in 2000, when OAFA received the Provost’s Award for Service Excellence. In 2008 she received the African American Alumni Council Sankofa Award for outstanding student support.

A search committee will be formed in the coming weeks to identify Porter’s successor by spring 2012.