By SHANNON O. WELLS
As part of her report to Senate Council on Nov. 9, Chancellor Joan Gabel prefaced news about Pitt’s subject-based rankings by Times Higher Education magazine with a disclaimer.
“I will say for the good of the order that I don’t like rankings news, even when it’s good — and this is good,” she said at the meeting in Posvar Hall. “Because rankings can be a very frustrating thing, but they are the way we benchmark ourselves, like all the other things that we measure. So I like to be transparent about them as our fair-weather friend that they may be. Now they’re a pretty good friend, so enjoy it.”
The Times Higher Education ranked schools based on 11 subjects. Gabel said Pitt ranked in all of them among both U.S. public and AAU public universities. In Arts and Humanities, Pitt rose from No. 7 to No. 4 for U.S. public universities and was 16th among all U.S. colleges. Pitt’s ranking also rose in Computer Science, Education, Life Sciences and Social Sciences, she said.
On the financial side, Pitt received “excellent” ratings for its credit worthiness from Moody’s (Aa1) and Standard and Poor’s (A), “which is super fascinating to a whole group of us — and has no interest at all to the rest of you — which is a luxury, because our credit rating is very strong,” Gabel said. “But it is a really big part of the entire business model of the institution that sort of runs in the background.”
Gabel thanked the “whole finance team” for its role ratings, which she said allowed the University to go to market “in the way we finance a lot of things that we do, and have a really, really good outcome. So, I’m very happy to report on that.”
Noting that she recently crossed the 100-day mark in her leadership role at Pitt, Gabel said she is “grateful in this very interesting time” to engage with various stakeholders in shared governance constituency groups. “We’ve accomplished a lot in a short period of time, and I’ve learned a lot in a short period of time, and I’m very grateful for that.”
Planning the next phase of the strategic Plan for Pitt is “going well,” Gabel said feedback the planning group received is now being channeled into “some engagement with vice chancellors, where they’re looking at the nature of the pieces that they have primary responsibility either for, or for facilitating. And I’m starting to think about what that means for them.”
Provost, dean searches
With a University provost job description completed, Gabel said the search process is now in a “very quiet period” while search consultants identify candidates and seek nominations.
“So you won’t hear a lot of news for a few weeks while this phase of the search is underway and then things pick back up again, in all likelihood” when the new semester begins. “That’s the typical cycle for this sort of thing.”
Regarding dean searches in three Pitt schools, Gabel said the Swanson School of Engineering has completed its listening sessions, “so we should have the position profile there soon.”
The School of Education’s search committee is in the process of being formed. “We expect that one to kick off in earnest in December,” she noted. “And then we have the School of Law, and that search will kick off the very earliest phases,” such as formulation of the search committee, next semester.
The new year also will bring a search for a Learning Research and Development Center director. Gabel said they will work with the Senate to form that search committee, because some of the members need to be elected.
The Board of Trustees secretary search also has begun. Noting there hasn’t been a board secretary search “in quite some time,” Gabel provided an overview of the process. At Pitt, the trustees secretary reports to the chancellor, who has unilateral authority to select the secretary, because it’s not an academic position.
“Historically, there have not been committee and group searches for the board secretary,” she said. However, engagement with the administration is a “big focus” of the Board of Trustees’ “continuous improvement review” of its processes and procedures, “and we think that’s a two-way street.
“We think we should engage the board in the selection of this person, who is very important to them, and engage with the community.” This will not be an academic search committee, she said, “where I charge them and then I disappear until there’s a set of finalists. We’re going to work on this together in the identification of the candidate.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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