University Times

Interim Chancellor Mark Nordenberg has added two senior aides to his staff and has ordered that media relations and four other units report directly to the Chancellor's office.

In an Aug. 25 memo announcing the moves to the University community, Nordenberg said that Vijai Singh, a sociology professor who has been serving as vice provost for Faculty Affairs and director of the University Center for Social and Urban Research (UCSUR), will relinquish those jobs temporarily to become interim associate chancellor. Lawyer and former Pitt administrator Jerome Cochran will take a leave of absence from the Downtown law firm of Klett Lieber Rooney & Schorling to serve as interim assistant chancellor.

"Both are interim appointments in the sense that I am interim," Nordenberg told the University Times. "I would expect that they will be here [in the Chancellor's office] throughout my service as interim chancellor." Shifting media relations to the Chancellor's office will have two benefits, Nordenberg wrote in his memo: "It will give me the chance to focus directly on what has been widely regarded as an area requiring more high-level attention, and it will permit the Vice Chancellor for Student and Public Affairs [Leon Haley, who previously oversaw media relations] to focus on what really are the two more fundamental charges in his portfolio — enhancing both student life and community relations." For years, University administrators and trustees have expressed concern about Pitt's public image and what they see as unfairly negative news coverage of the University. In an effort to address those concerns, then-Chancellor J. Dennis O'Connor hired Haley in March 1994 to fill the new position of vice chancellor for Public Affairs. Five months later, O'Connor added Student Affairs to Haley's responsibilities when Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs William Harmon resigned.

The University Times began reporting to Haley shortly after he was hired as vice chancellor for Public Affairs. Nordenberg said he will meet today, Aug. 31, with Haley and Times editor Nancy J. Brown "to begin discussing whatever changes need to be made" in light of this month's reorganization.

The other offices covered by Nordenberg's reorganization are Governmental Relations, Institutional Research, Internal Audit and University Counsel. They formerly reported to Ben J. Tuchi, senior vice chancellor for Business and Finance.

Shifting those offices "reflects my judgment that they are so central to the management of the University that they should report directly to the Chancellor's office," Norden-berg wrote. "Here, too, it is my hope that the elimination of oversight responsibility for the four involved departments will have the added benefit of enabling the senior vice chancellor, whose portfolio remains both important and extensive, to devote even more time and attention to matters more directly relevant to Business and Finance." While Singh has worked in the Provost's area of the University, Cochran was chiefly associated with Pitt's medical center and health sciences schools during his 17 years here. But Nordenberg said he did not set out to hire one assistant to represent the upper campus and another for the lower, non-medical campus. "That was not intentional at all," he said. "It was a matter of identifying a pair of people — one of whom, Dr. Singh, was particularly strong in the academic area; the other of whom, Mr. Cochran, was a particularly strong administrator." While serving as interim provost from September 1993 through June 1994, Nordenberg worked with Singh in the Provost's office. "I'd also worked with Vijai while I was on the Deans Council (Nordenberg was law dean from 1985 to 1993). And I had been a member of the program policy committee of UCSUR for several years," Nordenberg said.

"With Jerry, our administrative lines crossed briefly when he [Cochran] was interim dean of the pharmacy school," Nordenberg said. "He was also a student of mine at the law school. We've remained in contact over the years while he's been in practice." Cochran left Pitt in 1989 upon earning his law degree.

Assistant to the Chancellor Nancy White "will continue as the person principally responsible for routing business in the Chancellor's office, but no one in the office will function as a chief of staff," Nordenberg said. "Neither Dr. Singh nor Mr. Cochran will occupy a position in the reporting line between me and the officers who report directly to the Chancellor's office.

"Because this is a period of transition, I will resist any kind of rigid organizational structure in the office," Nordenberg continued. "Instead, we will tackle things in sensible ways as events unfold."

— Bruce Steele