By MARTY LEVINE

Editor’s note: The University Times is writing a series on the most recent winners of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award for Staff. This is the second installment.

Community Engagement Award winner: Erin Schuetz, academic and student affairs administrator, School of Public Health

Community involvement runs in the family for Erin Schuetz.

“It’s really been a part of my life from childhood on,” Schuetz says. Growing up, she watched her father Fred serve on the boards of many organizations. “My dad was what I call a quiet leader. When something needed to be done, he would just be there. People say, ‘Someone should do something,’ and he would remind me, ‘You are someone and you can do something.’”

Her earliest church and sorority involvement in community causes has led Schuetz to her current positions as vice president of Riverview school board in Oakmont and founder of the nonprofit Catelynn’s Kindness, which honors the life of a college friend who needed a liver transplant at a young ages, with programs that aid Ronald McDonald House Pittsburgh and a summer camp for liver and intestine transplant recipients.

“It’s what I call heart work,” Schuetz says. “You put your heart into it and you do the best you can.”

At Pitt, Schuetz also has served on Staff Council since 2019, including on several of its committees. In the School of Public Health, she is part of the staff committee, formed several years ago to gather information on staff issues and advocate for staff in the school.

The award, Schuetz says, was “extremely humbling. I thought it was a very great homage to my dad.”

Fred Schuetz also “had a second life as a clown, Fleebus,” she said; he entertained at local festivals and parades. “You have this part of you that is in you and sometimes you don’t know how to let it out,” she said. His clown work “brought joy and brought people a lot of happiness. He was being authentically who he was on the inside.”

Her family, she notes, “has been extremely supportive” of her community service. “I looked at my son and my husband and said we have to do the Fred work. We have to go out to do the work like we can. You always give back to your community. It doesn’t have to be in big ways. It can be in small ways. Someone has to carry on Fred’s work.”

Research Support Award winner: Heide Eash, associate director for federal contracts, Office of Sponsored Programs

Through 29 years at Pitt — from her start as a bioengineer in a benchtop lab to her current position — Eash has remained inspired by the impact of research at Pitt. The laboratory she worked in at the McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, where she was eventually named manager, focused on medical devices with potential life-changing results.

“When I moved to (the Office of Sponsored Programs) about 20 years ago, I still felt like I was doing that,” Eash says. “I’m no longer the one at the benchtop lab, but I’m helping the researchers get there.”

Her office team handles federal contracts, helping faculty to negotiate the awards process, and she herself is the signing authority for the University. She and a colleague were the first federal contracts team at Pitt in 2010.

“It’s an everchanging world” for her team, Eash says — across all of the years. There are always new regulations, executive orders and laws, and her team works with senior leadership, University counsel, the Innovation Institute, Pitt’s accounting and human resources offices and many more.

“Things are never the same, which is what I like about it,” she says. “We are never processing the same thing twice, even if it is the same sponsor. We’re constantly taking trainings. We’re constantly looking at new resources.

People ask why things take so long sometimes, she said. “There’s a lot going on in the background. We’re trying to make sure all the language is appropriate so once they start the research there are no barriers. We are protecting the University to make sure everything goes smoothly once the research starts.”

Adds Eash: “It’s not just my team — there are a ton of behind-the-scenes people” in the sponsored programs office. “I don’t need my name in lights. I’m just excited when we see (research results), knowing that you were part of getting that research” up and running.

“I was surprised that I won,” she says of her award. “I go about my work. I try to do a good job. It was a very pleasant surprise when I won.”

Marty Levine is a staff writer for the University Times. Reach him at martyl@pitt.edu or 412-758-4859.

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