More than 50 faculty retire under incentive program

By SUSAN JONES

Of the 230 faculty members who were eligible for the retirement incentive program Pitt announced this summer, 55 decided to take the deal, according to the provost’s office.

The final day for faculty to retire was Aug. 31. The longest tenure in this batch of retirees goes to H.J. "Jerry" Zoffer, dean emeritus of Pitt Business. Zoffer got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Pitt in 1952 and ’53, respectively, and immediately began teaching at the University, while working on his Ph.D. He served as dean of the Katz Graduate School of Business from 1968 to 1996, when he moved to emeritus status and continued to teach. When he stepped down as dean after 27 years, Zoffer was the longest-serving dean of a major U.S. business school.

STAFF RETIREMENTS

Eligible Pitt staff members had until Sept. 30 to decide whether to take the early retirement package. Of the 840 eligible staff employees, 482, or 57 percent, had declared their interest by late August and 238 had already signed agreements to retire by the end of this month.

The University Times wants to make sure we take note of all these departures, but we need your help. We need office managers or other administrators to send us a list of all the staff members from their unit who are retiring at the end of September, along with their title and years of service.

The deadline to send the lists to utimes@pitt.edu is Oct. 15, and we’ll run the names that we receive in the Oct. 23 edition of the University Times.

The program was available to faculty 65 and older who had worked at the University consecutively for 10 or more years. The retirement package included an incentive payment equal of 50 percent of the participant’s annual University base pay, less required tax withholdings, which was paid in a lump sum by Sept. 30. 

“The volunteer retirement incentive programs that we put in place for faculty and staff clearly made a lot of sense in terms of giving people that choice and at the same time helping the University's budget situation. And it all looks great until it becomes real,” Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said at the Sept. 25 Board of Trustees meeting.

“And now it’s personal and it’s about people that we know and love and care for who have just given so much to the institution,” he said. “Of the hundreds of people who are leaving the University under these circumstances, we owe them an enormous debt of gratitude for their collective contribution to this institution, and just our enormous of thanks and well wishes.”

Eva Tansky Blum, immediate past chair of the Board of Trustees, said at the trustees meeting, “I’d like to extend my gratitude to the faculty and staff members who will be departing the University as part of the early retirement plan. … We are grateful to you for your service, and your contributions over these many years.”

Below is a list of faculty retirees, as provided by each school. If there are names missing, contact us at utimes@pitt.edu, and we’ll add them to the list.

BRADFORD

Ernest D. Kallenbach (12 years), assistant professor of Accounting

Klaus Wuersig (20 years), associate professor of Engineering

BUSINESS

Robert Atkin (33 years), clinical professor of Organizations and Entrepreneurship

Robert Gilbert (25 years), clinical associate professor and undergraduate coordinator in Marketing

Kenneth Lehn (29 years), finance professor and Samuel A. McCullough Chair in Finance

Jerrold May (46 years), professor of Business Analytics and Operations

Rich Patton (44 years), clinical associate professor of Organizations and Entrepreneurship

Jerry Zoffer (67 years), dean emeritus (1968-97) and professor of Organizations and Entrepreneurship 

DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS & SCIENCES

Jonathan Arac (14 years, plus an earlier stint in the Pitt faculty starting in 1989), Andrew W. Mellon Professor of English and founding director, Humanities Center

Don Bialostosky (17 years), professor in the Composition: Literacy, Pedagogy, and Rhetoric group who is also active in the Literature program in the Department of English.

Jean Carr (32 years), associate professor in in Composition, Women's Studies, History of the Book, Literacy, and Literary Studies in the Department of English

Rebecca Denova (24.7 years), senior lecturer, Department of Religious Studies

Minglu Gao (15 years), research professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture

John Gareis (35 years), senior lecturer/director of Undergraduate Advising, Department of Communication

Karen Gerhart (20 years), professor, Department of History of Art and Architecture

Paula Grabowski (29 years), professor emerita, Department of Biological Sciences

Lewis Jacobson (53 years), professor emeritus, Department of Biological Sciences

Nicholas Jones (45 years), professor, Department of Classics

John Lyne (24 years), professor, Department of Communication; faculty in Bioethics; resident fellow, Center for the Philosophy of Science

Michael Morrill (44 years), professor, Department of Studio Arts

Clark Muenzer (41 years), professor emeritus, Department of German

Kathleen Musante (27 years), professor emeritus, Department of Anthropology, and professor, Behavioral and Community Health Sciences in the Graduate School of Public Health

Tony Novosel (26 years), senior lecturer, Department of History

Craig Peebles (38 years), professor emeritus, Department of Biological Sciences

Daniel Romesberg (24 years), senior lecturer, Department of Sociology

John Rosenberg (42 years), professor emeritus, Department of Biological Sciences

Cynthia Skrzycki (16 years), professor in the Writing Program, Department of English

Edward Stricker (49 years), University Professor of Neuroscience

Cecile Chu-Chin Sun (35 years), professor of Premodern Chinese Literature, Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures

DENTAL MEDICINE

Paul Moore (35 years), professor in the Department of Dental Public Health, has served as director of the Oral Health Science Institute, director of Research, director of Graduate Education, and chair of the Department of Dental Anesthesiology for the School of Dental Medicine. He has recently been asked to serve on the U.S. Surgeon General’s Expert Panel of Prescription Drug Abuse.

Robert Engelmeier (21 years), professor and former chair of the Department of Prosthodontics. Currently, he is the program director for the Prosthodontic Residency Program

EDUCATION

Roger Klein (51 years), associate professor in the Health and Human Development department

Fredric Goss (37 years), of the Health and Human Development department

Cynthia Popovich (21 years), of the Health and Human Development department

PUBLIC HEALTH

Stewart J. Anderson (31 years), professor in the Department of Biostatistics, where he developed methods for clinical trials, serving as primary statistician for many breast cancer treatment protocols for the National Surgical Adjuvant Breast and Bowel Project.

Lawrence A. Kingsley (37 years), professor in the departments of Epidemiology and Infectious Diseases and Microbiology. Kingsley is an infectious disease epidemiologist with a special interest in the natural history of HIV and its metabolic and cardiovascular complications, serving as the co-principal investigator of the Pittsburgh Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study.

Gary M. Marsh (47 years), professor in the departments of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Clinical and Translational Science. Marsh focused his career on statistical methods for occupational health and also served as founding director of the Center for Occupational Biostatistics and Epidemiology. 

SCHOOL OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION

Stephen Hirtle (33 years), professor in SCI, with joint appointments in the Department of Psychology and Intelligent Systems Program. He directs the Spatial Information Research Group, which conducts research on the structure of cognitive maps, navigation in real and virtual environments, and both applied and theoretical models for spatial cognition.

Rami Melhem (34 years), professor. His research interests include: Power aware computing, computer architecture and high-performance computing and optical networks

Taieb Znati (32 years), professor. His research interests include: Distributed multimedia systems, high-speed networks to support real-time applications, performance evaluation and local area networks

SCHOOL OF HEALTH AND REHABILITATION SCIENCES

Barbara Vento (23 years), associate professor, director of admissions for Audiology and Speech Language Pathology, and Audiology externship coordinator

Michael McCue (41 years, 26 at SHRS), professor and director, Counseling program. McCue founded the school's first Rehabilitation Counseling program in 2000, expanding it to a CACREP accredited Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling program in 2015.

SOCIAL WORK

Cynthia Bradley-King (14 years), clinical assistant professor and academic coordinator, Child Welfare Education for Baccalaureates

OTHER

Pitt–Greensburg had two faculty retirements earlier this year that were not previously listed:  Thomas Wolf, a professor in the Computer Science department, and Gary Lutz, an assistant professor in the English department.

Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.

 

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