Pitt Chronicle

University of Pittsburgh alumnus Dan Marino will be the featured speaker at Pitt’s 2008 Commencement at 1 p.m. April 27 in the Petersen Events Center.

Marino, a member of both the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the College Football Hall of Fame, is currently an in-studio host of CBS-TV’s The NFL Today and a former cohost of HBO’s award-winning football show Inside the NFL. He and his wife, Claire, are two of the nation’s leading advocates and philanthropists for the care of children with autism and special needs through the Dan Marino Foundation.

University of Pittsburgh alumnus David Bellet (CAS ’67) and his wife, Tina, have given the University $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 Bellet Award program, which heretofore had been funded on an annual basis, recognizes outstanding and innovative undergraduate teaching in Pitt’s School of Arts and Sciences. Each award recipient receives a prize of $5,000.

The University of Pittsburgh has created a new Center for Energy as part of what Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg referred to as “the increasing need to address the complex energy challenges of our time, which call for more reliable, efficient, and environmentally friendly energy sources.”