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April 17, 2008

Bellet award endowed

Alumnus David Bellet and his wife, Tina, have donated $1.5 million to endow in perpetuity the Tina and David Bellet Arts and Sciences Teaching Excellence Award.

Established by the Bellets in 1998, the award program, which had been funded annually, recognizes outstanding and innovative undergraduate teaching in the School of Arts and Sciences. Each award recipient receives $5,000.

Since the inception of the award program, 28 Pitt faculty members have been honored. The 2008 awardees are Melanie Dreyer-Lude, theatre arts, and Jeffrey Oaks, English. (See March 20 University Times.)

“David and Tina Bellet, longtime and passionate advocates for teaching of the highest quality, know the difference a great teacher can make,” said Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg. “We are immensely grateful to them for endowing their excellence-in-teaching award.”

N. John Cooper, the Bettye J. and Ralph E. Bailey Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, said, “The distinctive feature of the Bellet Award is the way the program builds a culture of teaching excellence through recognizing the contributions of individuals, building community through the celebration of teaching excellence, and promoting a dialogue about what constitutes teaching excellence.”

David Bellet, retired chair and founder of global investment firm Crown Advisors, earned his BA in political science at Pitt and his MBA at Columbia. He is a member of the School of Arts and Sciences board of visitors, was selected for the inaugural class of Pitt’s Legacy Laureates in 2000 and was named a Pitt Distinguished Alumni Fellow in 2001. Tina Bellet, a former teacher, serves on the Lesley University board of trustees. She is a trustee emeritus of Horace Mann School, an independent, coeducational, pre-K-12 school, where she serves as a member of the trustees’ education committee.

The Bellet gift is part of Pitt’s $2 billion capital campaign. The campaign has raised more than $1.228 billion to date.


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