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July 9, 1998

Trustee urges board to recruit more women, minority members

The atmosphere at the June 25 Board of Trustees meeting was heavy with self-congratulation, as trustees and administrators noted recent successes in enrollment, scholarship, fund-raising and improved quality of life for Pitt students.

Only one trustee ventured a criticism. Earl F. Hord urged his fellow board members to get serious about recruiting more minorities and/or women as trustees.

Hord, managing general partner of Keystone Minority Capital Fund, is African American and a term trustee. As such, he is the only non-white among Pitt's 48 trustees who is eligible to vote at board meetings.

Three women trustees have similar voting status: state-appointed Commonwealth trustee E. Jeanne Gleason, who is executive director of the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance; and term trustees Suzanne W. Broadhurst, director of corporate giving for Eat 'N' Park Restaurants, Inc., and Alice Kindling, public health administrator for the Allegheny County Health Department.

To better reflect western Pennsylvania's population as well as an increasingly diverse University community, Pitt's board must make a serious effort to recruit highly qualified minority and women trustees, Hord said.

He called on the University's Office of the Secretary of the Board of Trustees to compile a list of minority and women trustee candidates for consideration at the next meeting of the board's nominating committee this fall. The committee's meeting date has not been set yet.

Board secretary Robert Dunkelman said he will follow through on Hord's recommendation.

"What I will try to do is come up with a list that includes some prominent Pitt alumni, especially from this region," Dunkelman said after last month's board meeting.

"The idea will be to go after people we have a good chance of recruiting, instead of nominating people like Gen. Colin Powell and so forth" — big name officials who already serve on numerous boards.

In addition to Hord, two other African Americans (Alfred L. Moye, university affairs director of Hewlett-Packard Co., and William E. Strickland, president and CEO of Bidwell Training Center, Inc.) and one Asian (C.C. Tung, chairman of Hong Kong's Orient Overseas International, Ltd.) serve on Pitt's board. As special trustees, they can vote at meetings of trustees committees but not at full board meetings.

Two women serve as special trustees: Karen S. Fisher, assistant vice president, division of health care affairs at the Association of American Medical Colleges, and Martha Hartle Munsch, a partner with the law firm of Reed Smith Shaw & McClay.

Pitt's 28 emeritus trustees include one African-American man (former Pennsylvania Speaker of the House K. Leroy Irvis), one white woman (attorney Yolanda G. Barco), one African-American woman (Helen S. Faison, retired deputy superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools) and 25 white men.

Emeritus trustees are former trustees elected to emeritus status by the board. Emeritus trustees may participate (but not vote) at board meetings and may serve as voting members of committees.

— Bruce Steele


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