Legendary Communicator to Retire After Three Decades of Service: Colleagues recall Aug’s wit and wisdom: “One sharp cookie”

By Sally Ann Flecker

Mary Ann Aug

The simple, fierce pride that Mary Ann Aug, associate vice chancellor for executive communications, holds for the University of Pittsburgh had its first stirrings in her earliest days.

Her father, who worked in Oakland, would bring his small daughter out to see where he spent his time. His pride in the area was due in no small measure to the presence of the University.

There’s Pitt, he would tell his daughter as he took her around. There’s the University.

And she beheld it as a place of wonder and distinction.

Later, Aug would go on to bring distinction to Pitt through her work at the University.

Aug’s first day on the job, though, wasn’t as auspicious as she had imagined it. The 1972 flu epidemic was at its height when the new senior news and publications rep for Pitt’s six schools of the health professions climbed the hill to Scaife Hall after first meeting with her boss in the Cathedral. She located her office, introduced herself to a colleague, and then, confessing that she was desperately sick, asked if someone could take her home, where she spent the next three days flat on her back.

“But after that things got better,” laughed Aug, who enjoys a good story, even when it’s at her own expense.

Thirty years—and notably few sick days—later, Aug recently announced her plans for an early retirement, wrapping up a remarkable career at Pitt.

Aug cut her teeth at Scaife Hall, including what she calls her “baptism by fire,” when, in the early ’70s, University of Pittsburgh breast cancer researcher Bernard Fisher, M.D. (MED ’43) was singled out for attack for his revolutionary research showing that a lumpectomy could be as effective as a radical mastectomy in treating breast cancer. But even the experience gained by contending with an onslaught of media attention from all over the country couldn’t fully prepare her for the January day in 1977 when a gas explosion at noon in Pitt’s Langley Hall killed several, injured scores of others, and rocked the region.

Aug's Achievements Mary Ann Aug, associate vice chancellor for executive communication at the University of Pittsburgh, will retire on Sept. 30. Among her career accomplishments are: • Launching the University’s flagship publication, Pitt Magazine, which, in its 15-year history, has been one of the most-honored collegiate publications in the country, earning scores of Gold Medal awards in the annual international Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) competition; • Starting PittMed, the School of Medicine’s magazine, which has won three consecutive CASE Gold awards in the first three years of its existence; • Overseeing Pitt’s communications program, which, under her direction, won numerous CASE awards for news, publications, and video production, culminating in the 1990 CASE Grand Gold Medal Award for General Program Excellence; • Chairing the CASE national conference for chief public relation officers and being invited by CASE to lead workshops and seminars at international professional conferences in Kent, England, and Johannesburg, South Africa; and • Serving as president of the Public Relations Society of Health Care Organizations and as president of College and University Public Relations Association of Pennsylvania (CUPRAP), which presented her with the Ciervo Award for Outstanding Service to the Cause of Higher Education in Pennsylvania.

Aug, by then the acting director of news and publications for the University, swung into action, getting accurate information to the media about recovery efforts, squelching rumors of 200 dead, setting up a media center where reporters had instant access to phones, and convincing Chancellor Wesley Posvar to step away from decision-making long enough to appear before TV cameras for the six o’clock news.
“This was before anybody knew the importance of doing live television,” said Aug. “I told him, ‘You’ve got to do this. The families need to hear, the rescuers need to hear, everybody needs to hear that you’re there.’

“And so, as we walked up the hill, we talked about what he was going to say. First, sympathy to the families of those injured or killed; second, reassurance that the people have searched all afternoon and to our knowledge the three that were found dead are the only three; and third, an enormous thanks to all those rescue workers. People just appeared from all over the city. Construction crews brought cranes. It was fantastic.”

Aug’s deft handling of the Langley Hall emergency earned her a national reputation in higher education public relations. True to form, what she did with her expertise was share it, speaking frequently on crisis communications and other topics to public relations professionals around the country and even as far afield as the United Kingdom and South Africa.

“Mary Ann Aug is truly one of the legendary figures in American higher education,” commented Robert Hill, Pitt vice chancellor for Public Affairs who established the Executive Communications unit in 2000 and named her associate vice chancellor in 2002. “Her accomplishments here at the University are the stuff of lore and made Pitt’s award-winning public relations operation under her leadership the envy of other universities.”

There’s no end to her energy. Aug helped lead the University’s yearlong, event-packed Bicentennial celebration in 1987—all the while writing the dissertation for her Pitt Ph.D. in the administration of higher education.

For the Chautauqua-at-Pitt conference on U.S.-Soviet relations, a 1989 event that brought 200 Soviet officials and citizens (and, no doubt, some KGB agents) to the University for a week of discussion and debate, she rounded up 50 public relations volunteers from around the city to help staff a 12-hour-a-day press room for international coverage of the groundbreaking event.

Over the years, she’s launched the award-winning Pitt and PittMed magazines, encouraged and overseen the production of nationally pace-setting videos, and brought on board the Pitt public relations department’s first Web designer.

In 1990, the communications department that she had built over the decade of the ’80s to an unprecedented level of excellence won the international CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Grand Gold Medal Award as the best institutional relations program.

Still, if you ask her what her greatest contribution has been to the University, she’ll say it’s her ability to bring in—and keep—talented people.

“She’s had an enormous impact,” said national media relations consultant Frank Dobisky. “There are people out in this higher education public relations world who owe their careers to Mary Ann. People around the country call on her for advice and counsel, and she’s always freely offered it.

“When I think of the phrase joie de vivre, I think of Mary Ann. She has a sense of humor and a joy that surrounds her. And yet anybody who’s underestimated her has found that they’ve made a big mistake. Mary Ann is one sharp cookie. ”

Today, Aug echoes her father, those many years back: “It is such an incredibly important place,” she said. “To have been able to be a part of it is a wonderful thing. I have just loved Pitt.”