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September 3, 2015

Why They Give: J. Jeffrey Inman

Through the Faculty and Staff Campaign, University employees can help Pitt thrive by contributing to any of more than 2,000 scholarship, fellowship and professorship funds. Payroll deductions are available.

Annually, nearly 3,000 Pitt employees take part in the campaign, from every part of the University. Their backgrounds, and reasons for giving, are as diverse as the Pitt community.

The University Times is profiling some Faculty and Staff Campaign donors.

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InmanJ. Jeffrey Inman and his wife created the Inman Family Endowed Fund two years ago to support doctoral students at the Katz Graduate School of Business, where he is associate dean for research and faculty, the Albert Wesley Frey Professor of Marketing and a faculty member in business administration.

The fund provides a fellowship of $500 for each recipient: “A small top-off to their graduate assistantship,” he calls it. “We hope to grow that over the years.”

Although it’s too early to see how such a career kick-starter eventually will help, the Inmans have seen early results.

Last year, a recipient conducted research on helping consumers make healthier food choices, looking at the effect of putting simple nutritional information at supermarket store checkouts. One grocery chain now has decided to incorporate the idea in its stores on a trial basis.

Inman has been supporting the faculty and staff campaign at Pitt for the past 11 years; he has made gifts to his school, the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Fund and UPMC Community Care Fund, along with purchasing football and basketball season tickets.

“It’s also been pretty fundamental to my success in academia, so we wanted to give back,” he says of his efforts to aid academics at Pitt. “We’re in a position in our lives where we have a little money to give back.

“People have to make their own decisions on their own efforts to support [causes],” he adds, “but education is very close to my heart and my wife’s heart, and that’s what we’ve chosen to support, and I would encourage other faculty and staff to do likewise.”

—Marty Levine

Filed under: Feature,Volume 48 Issue 1

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