University Times

The nominating committee of the Board of Trustees last week named as candidates for membership on the board alumni Keith E. Schaefer, president and chief executive officer of BPL Global, Ltd., and John A. Swanson, president of Swanson Analysis Services, Inc.

Schaefer was nominated as an alumni trustee, Swanson as a term trustee, both for 2006-2010.

The committee also nominated trustee Robert M. Hernandez, chair of RTI International Metals, Inc., to serve as vice chair, and trustee Marlee S. Myers, managing director of the Pittsburgh office of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP, to be a member of the board’s executive committee.

Ralph J. Cappy, chief justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, was nominated for a third one-year term as board chair.

The full board is expected to act on the nominations at its meeting set for tomorrow, June 23.

Schaefer of Indian Wells, Calif., is the founder of BPL Global, a worldwide service provider of broadband and Internet content via standard power lines. He earned a B.S. in the College of Arts and Sciences in 1971.

Schaefer is immediate past president of Pitt Alumni Association. He is a volunteer for the Pitt Career Network, and the host for University on the Road programs for alumni in California. He also is a member of the University’s capital campaign steering committee and has established the Keith E. Schaefer Undergraduate Scholarship Fund at Pitt. He was named a Distinguished Alumni Fellow at the 2000 honors convocation.

Swanson, president of the finite-element consulting firm Swanson Analysis Services, Inc., and a resident of The Villages, Fla., is recognized internationally as an authority and innovator in the application of finite-element methods to engineering.

In 1970 — four years after he graduated from Pitt’s School of Engineering with a Ph.D. in applied mechanics — Swanson founded ANSYS, Inc., to develop, support and market a finite-element software code he created that is used by industries employing computer-aided engineering.

At Pitt, he has created the John A. Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence, which houses the John A. Swanson Center for Micro and Nano Systems; the John A. Swanson Center for Product Innovation, and the RFID (radio frequency identification) Center for Excellence. He also has established the John A. Swanson Embedded Computing Laboratory in computer engineering and the John A. Swanson Fund in the engineering school. In 1998, he was named a Pitt School of Engineering Distinguished Alumnus and, in 2002, was inducted into the Cathedral of Learning Society, which recognizes individuals who have donated $1 million or more to the University.